Breaking Silence: The Case That Changed the Face of Human Rights (Advancing Human Rights)

Rating:
Summary: Joelito Filartiga's Death Was Not In Vain
Review: BREAKING SILENCE is a book on International Law that reads like a popular thriller.

In Richard Alan White's skillfully written story, he tells how 17-year-old Joelito Filartiga was tortured to death by police in Paraguay. The boy's father, Dr. Joel Filartiga, a medical doctor who offers care to peasants in a small rural clinic, is also an artist, a progressive thinker, and well-known public speaker. Dr. Filartiga had vocally disagreed with the Paraguyan power structure. To the Stroessner government, Filartiga was a dangerous man. Because they feared the father, they murdered the son.

Rating:
Summary: The Filartiga Landmark Case
Review: Breaking Silence, The Case That Changed The Face of Human Rights, by Richard Alan White, (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 320 pp.
[ISBN 1-58901-032-0]

This is a book about a landmark international law case written from a participant-observer point of view by an historian who was involved in a human rights tragedy at every stage of its development. The focal point of the book is the important case of Filártiga v. Pena-Irala [630 F.2d 876, 2d Cir.,1980] which for the first time, imported internationally defined human rights norms into U.S. jurisprudence.

The author is a Senior Fellow of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (Washington, DC) who was conducting research in 1976 on Paraguay's history where he befriended the family of Dr. Joel Filártiga in Asunción. White explains, "As a trained historian, I happened to be on the scene before, during and after what turned out to be an historical event," acknowledging "these improbable circumstances" enabled him to detail the physician's courageous saga taking him and his family from one end to another of the Western Hemisphere. For the many lawyers, students and activists who are familiar with the famous ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1980 and for those not so informed, the author's objective is to present the human in "human rights law" by providing the reader with a riveting account of the case of Filártiga v. Pena-Irala, now routinely appearing in human rights and international law textbooks.

The Filártiga principle, as now understood, stands for the proposition that torture is a tort within the meaning of U.S. law informed by the standards of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a component of international customary law. As such, the Alien Tort Claims Act, part of the first judiciary Act of 1789, applies so as to authorize civil law suits by an alien residing in the United States against another alien for torture, recognized as among the most serious of all human rights violations. As a result, deposed dictators, death squad leaders, rapists and torturers from overseas should expect no safe haven from the reach of civil justice in the United States.

Joelito Filártiga was the 17 year old son of an internationally famous physician, Dr. Joel Filártiga who ran (and still runs) a clinic for the 50,000 campasinos in the Ybycuí Valley, Paraguay. Because, in the 1970s, he routinely gave free medical care to the poor he came under suspicion by the right wing dictatorship then in power in that small landlocked "Southern Cone" country. The physician further provoked the government of General Alfredo Stroessner by publicly speaking with admiration of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care...."

Ironically it was the doctor's innocent only son who suffered most at the hands of the dictatorship. Because Dr. Filártiga was an outspoken critic of the government's derelict public health policy, officials suspected him of subversive activities and left-wing connections. In 1976, young Joelito was abducted by police Inspector Américo Peña, who assumed the boy could be forced to betray his father. Instead, he died of cardiac arrest during the hideous torture interrogation. Thereafter, Dr. Filártiga and his family cooperated with Amnesty International human rights workers in Paraguay. Richard Alan White, then visiting in his capacity as an historian from the University of California, Los Angeles documented the case and transmitted information about the politically motivated torture-murder to Amnesty .International's research headquarters in London. The Amnesty Secretariat and its medical officer took an interest in the murdered boy's case under its mandate to act on behalf of those prisoners of conscience who suffer torture in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The author makes clear that Amnesty International (AI) double checked the facts, making sure that the Filártigas were not advocates of violence, that the boy was taken as a prisoner of conscience and tortured for political reasons. Relying on White's reports from Paraguay, AI then organized a worldwide campaign, issuing reports and urgent action memos calling on members to pressure the Paraguayan and other governments to take action. Soon afterwards, the dictator buckled under the intense international outcry and suspended Peña. While visiting the United States, Dr. Filártiga and his daughter Dolly traced the policeman responsible for the murder of Joelito to New York where he was apprehended by Immigration authorities. Thereafter, Dolly Filártiga and her father filed a wrongful death action in federal district court under the Alien Tort Claims Act , alleging that in 1976 Peña-Irala kidnaped and tortured to death Joelito Filártiga, the physician's seventeen-year-old son. The district court dismissed the Filártigas' complaint for lack of "subject matter jurisdiction." White fully describes the proceedings and his interviews with the principals clearly enliven the case.

The court of appeals reversed, recognizing the emergence of a universal consensus that international law affords substantive rights to individuals and places limits on a state's treatment of its citizens. From these circumstances, the landmark case of Filártiga v. Peña emerged, marking for the first time a U.S. Federal Court accepting jurisdiction in a civil suit against torture committed in a foreign country. Peña's responsibility for the human rights offense supplied the basis on which the court ruled that officially sanctioned torture is a violation of international law [Filártiga, 630 F.2d at 884]. In a classical formulation, the Court said: "Like the pirate and slave trader before him, the torturer has become the enemy of all mankind." In considering the award of damages in the Filártiga's civil suit against Peña, four medical specialists --physicians and psychiatrists- presented expert testimony on the effects of torture on family survivors. In 1984, Judge Eugene Nickerson announced a total judgment against the defendant amounting to $10,385 million [ Filártiga v. Peña, 577 F. Supp.860 (1984)]. The Filártiga case has become important as a precedent, having many progeny cases, including some directed at corporations said to be responsible for human rights violations, hence the current concern of Washington policy-makers. [Linda Greenhouse, "Justices Hear Case About Foreigner's Use of Federal Courts," New York Times, March 31, 2004]

Breaking Silence should be considered for assigned reading and use in diverse fields of study. For students of public policy and political science classes, the volume provides deep context for understanding the posture of the George W. Bush Administration seeking to curb the precedent value of the Filartiga principle, alleging it potentially hinders the U.S. conduct of foreign policy, but more particularly hampers U.S.-based multinational corporations' operations in developing countries. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Unocol Corporation, etc., in their overseas work (respectively Indonesia, Nigeria, Myanmar/Burma) have demanded government security forces to protect their facilities but have unaccountably turned a blind eye when these same police use torture, extra-legal killings, and (in the case of Burma) the recruitment of slave labor. [For information about the on-going campaign to preserve the Alien Tort Claims Act, see: www.nosafehaven.org]

In addition to being a useful supplementary reading for courses on international law, global politics, human rights, political science, social ethics, current history, and Latin American affairs, the book also has promise for courses on international public health. Medical professionals should have an interest in this case because torture victims daily turn up in 25 clinics around the USA dealing with torture survivor issues, especially among immigrants from current and former dictatorships. For them and those treating them, White's book showcases the tenacity of a victimized family in their effort to restore their faith that some touch of justice is attainable in society. Clinicians report that the act of victims' and their loved ones breaking silence is an important step toward healing. Moreover, health professionals will recognize in Dr. Filartiga's struggle the interconnections between human rights and doctors' needs to assess their own and their government's shortcomings by the standards of the right to health and medical care.

White's book merits inclusion among thought-provoking works of humanistic literature. To clarify why the Filártiga family could not secure justice in Paraguay, the author's use of dialogue and dramatic action are worth sampling here as typical of his writing style. He explains that once proceedings in Paraguay were shown to be hopeless and after the Filártiga law suit in the United States commenced, President Stroessner sent an emissary named Martínez Mesa to the physician's clinic. The dictator's interlocutor told Dr. Filártiga:

"I have come with an offer of comfort for you and your family. The government is under a lot of pressure and desires to find a solution for your situation. There were six people who killed Joelito, and we are prepared to deliver you their corpses. All of them. We only ask that you drop the suit in the United States, and remain silent."

The more he talked, the more Filártiga wanted to know. Excitedly, he peppered Martínez Mesa with questions. "Who are these people? How could I be sure they are the ones?"

"Because I was there. I saw."
"Where was Joelito killed? Investigaciones? The Sajonia police station?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Why, were you there?"

"That also I am not at liberty to say. I swear that I did not personally harm your son, but I was one of the first to touch his corpse."

"I want the names. Who else besides Peña? Chief Domingo Galeano? The other police on duty that night in Sajonia? Crispulo Salcedo? Celcilio Torales? Diaz?"

"I can't tell you that either. But what I can assure you is that this world can be a beautiful place for you and your family. You only must stop everything here and in the United States. And the bodies of the men who killed Joelito will be brought to you. All of them. Here to Ybycuí. The death of your son will have been avenged. You can feel at peace."

Is this peace and justice? The sensitivity and humanity that speak to the reader about the hallmarks of justice in Breaking Silence supply a useful reference for the broad study of jurisprudence and philosophy of law because in rare and subtle ways, the book contributes to a narrative understanding of legal complexities. In "Poets as Judges" philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum argues on behalf of the need for such understanding borne of reading humanistic literature. While constrained by statute and precedent, she says, "judges must educate not only their technical capacities but also their capacity for humanity" avoiding mechanistic and parochial approaches to interpreting law when justice would be better served by bringing larger humane sensitivities to their tasks. In Poetic Justice, The Literary Imagination and Public Life, Nussbaum concludes: "In the absence of that capacity, the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves will dwell in pain around us and have less hope of freedom."

Breaking Silence reads like a novel, the kind that is difficult to put down because it is well written and kindles the hope of freedom. To my knowledge, the "participant observer" feature of Breaking Silence makes it difficult to compare to anything in human rights literature, although the author's "first person" point of view brings to mind the journalistic strength of Ian Guest's Behind the Disappearances. Certainly, White's intimate recounting of the politics and historical context of a leading case renders it as instructive as Anthony Lewis's Gideon's Trumpet. Moreover, ten years in preparation, White's book relies on the author's copious files and first hand experience as witness and participant in a case that has changed the face of human rights. His archive of the case contains hundreds of hours of interviews and time spent with the principals, all of which contribute to a unique and riveting presentation written in the style of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. The torture-murder of a teenaged boy gives the fearsome episode great poignancy and makes clear why the author's use of "fictionalized non-fiction" is such a fortuitous choice of treatment for the breath-taking elements of the Caso Filártiga.

From my standpoint as a human rights educator, Breaking Silence is a triple winner: a highly readable and gripping dramatic thriller, a true story by an historian who witnessed the development of the landmark case from its tragic beginning to triumphant ending, and a book which, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum counsels, puts the human into the study of human rights.

Richard Pierre Claude
Founding Editor, Human Rights Quarterly


Rating:
Summary: BREAKING SILENCE: THE CASE THAT CHANGED THE FACE OF HUMAN RI
Review: Exciting and action packed thriller that is historically accurate.
This book highlights the case that was decided in the US Supreme Court this year (2004).This is an affirmation that tortures and other human rights violators, who strike anywhere in the World, may be held to account by their victims in US Courts. It is apparant that Dr. White has a first person knowledge of the people and places involved and he is supremely effective as an historian who lived this era in history!

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating tale of courage.
Review: My heart goes out to the Filartiga family. Their courage is an inspiration and the legal case is important not just to them, but to everyone no matter where they live.