On Being a Good Citizen of the World

This is the sort of story that really fills me with hope. It profiles Fredy A. Peccerelli, a young man originally from Guatemala whose family fled to the United States when he was nine after his father was threatened by death squads.

Peccerelli has since become a forensic anthropologist dealing with human rights organizations to obtain justice for those whose voices have been brutally stilled:

Human rights organizations employ forensic anthropologists to document war crimes and human rights abuses. Mr. Peccerelli, director of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, has investigated the deaths of thousands of civilians killed in the civil war in Guatemala from 1960 to 1996.

"What we do is all about life," he said here last month on a break at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "It's about people. This is about applying scientific knowledge for everyday human issues."

The association awarded its science and human rights prize for 2004 to Mr. Peccerelli and his colleagues at the foundation for promoting "human rights at great personal risk."

It's through the hard work of people like Peccerelli and Dr. Clyde Snow, probably the major figure in this field, that the scientific truth about the hideous human rights records of some of the most brutal figures in history have come to light.

Also in the New York Times today is an editorial by Dolly Filártiga, the sister of Joel Filártiga who was brutally tortured to death by the former Paraguayan dictator, Alfredo Stroessner 28 years ago today at the age of 17. Dolly Filártiga eventually fled to the US, discovered her brother's killer living in Brooklyn and with the help of the Center for Constitutional Rights brought suit under the Alien Torts Claims Act against Américo Peña-Irala and obtained a judgment against him - and a landmark decision in the history of human rights litigation.

As I wrote here and here, the Bush administration and the Ashcroft DOJ are trying to render this avenue of obtaining justice moot. Dolly Filártiga makes a compelling argument as to the value of this judgment:

Although Mr. Peña-Irala was sent back to Paraguay and none of the $10 million judgment has yet been paid, our case established a remarkable precedent: from Ethiopia's Red Terror to Argentina's Dirty War to the Philippines' dictatorship under Ferdinand Marcos, in 19 instances survivors or victims' relatives have used this law to obtain a measure of justice.

For my family, the court decision put us at risk but also gave protection — the Paraguayan government threatened us but wouldn't risk retaliating once we had the American legal system on our side. In Paraguay, the case remains a symbol of the injustice of the Stroessner dictatorship, and my brother is considered a martyr for human rights.

However, this remarkable legacy is now in jeopardy. Reversing almost three decades of executive-branch policy, the Bush administration is asking the Supreme Court to eviscerate the Alien Tort Claims Act. In a case involving the kidnapping of a Mexican doctor suspected of involvement in the killing of an American drug enforcement official, the Justice Department (supported by amicus briefs from business lobbies) is claiming that the rulings in my case and in 18 others since were based on a mistaken interpretation of the law. Today the court will hear its arguments for a new reading of the 215-year-old statute that would make it virtually impossible for human rights victims to sue.

If the court accepts these arguments, then torturers like Américo Peña-Irala would be able to travel freely in the United States. Deposed dictators like Ferdinand Marcos and brutal generals like Carlos Vides Casanova, who presided over human rights abuses in El Salvador in the 1980's, could come here and enjoy safe haven.

Opposition to the International Criminal Court, opposition to the Alien Torts Claims Act. I'll be tactful and calm and simply say that I find it impossible to believe that the Bush administration genuinely cares about justice for victims of human rights abuses.