(para español, ven abajo)

UPDATE: Just in and available for viewing is Romper el Muro de la Impunidad (Breaking Down the Wall of Impunity). This is the extended video (11 minutes) that N-Map and CEJIL are launching as part of their campaign to overcome the barriers to truth and justice in Uruguay. It includes interviews with leading politicians, academics, journalists, family members and victims themselves.

The video was shot a year ago–in March 2012–around President Mujica’s public acknowledgement of state responsibility for grave crimes against its citizens during  period of military rule from 1973 – 1985.  With your help, we can keep the momentum alive and let Uruguayans and their leaders know that impunity, and lack of knowledge about a society’s past, is an impediment for the future and violates the state’s responsibility to ensure the human rights of its citizens.

• See the joint CEJIL/N-Map press release
• Listen to CEJIL’s Program Director for Bolivia and the Southern Cone, Liliana Tojo’s  interview on Radio Uruguay

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Sandra Pelúa was in grade school before she first found out her biological father had been disappeared by the Uruguayan military during the nation’s dictatorship from 1973-1985. Unaware that her mother’s husband was not her father, it was not until she first entered grade school that she recognized her surname was different from her siblings’, while all her friends with brothers and sisters had the same name. That was when Sandra first learned who her real father was.

Sandra never knew this man though. Her family, constrained by the silence enveloping Uruguayan society following the dictatorship, never spoke openly about him or his disappearance. Instead, the trauma of the past remained an unspoken reality and haunted her family’s interactions as they struggled to create a new life in a country that had the highest rate of political incarceration in the world.  

Knowing that she cannot change her own upbringing, which was tacitly but consistently affected by impunity and a culture of silence, Sandra looks towards the future of Uruguay as the best hope for overcoming the difficulty of her own past. Sandra believes in promoting justice and truth about Uruguay’s past, not only for herself and the father she never knew, but also because she believes that her son “has a right to know that he has a future, but mainly that he also has a past, a history.”

The New Media Advocacy Project (N-Map) and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) produced two videos to highlight Sandra’s story, and those of many others like her, to advocate for reopening cases related to crimes committed under the military dictatorship and justice for families of the disappeared, as well as victims of torture and rape. While the crimes committed during the dictatorship occurred over thirty years ago, the abuses that so many Uruguayans suffered are still not only present to them, but important for all citizens in the country – to their history, and also to their understanding of the future hopes for democracy and the possibility of justice and rule of law in Uruguay. The first video called Breaking Down the Wall of Impunity is an 11-minute piece, which provides an analysis of the barriers to truth and justice in Uruguay. It includes interviews with leading politicians, academics, journalists, family members and victims themselves. The shorter 2.5-minute video called Never Again, What? seeks to act as a platform for change by engaging all Uruguayan citizens about the relevance and important of justice. It is intended for social media, television, and radio distribution. Together, the videos are part of a comprehensive strategy for helping to implement human rights guarantees for victims and their right to justice.

Despite an ever-increasing group of voices like Sandra’s, impunity continues to be entrenched in the small Southern Cone nation. Many Uruguayans do not have access to records to learn about their past, and most perpetrators are protected by an amnesty law, which states that they cannot be tried for crimes committed during the nation’s military rule, and which conflicts with Uruguay’s international legal obligations.

Within the past few weeks, two disturbing events occurred that reinforce the continued challenges Uruguay faces in their fight to achieve justice. First, judge Mariana Mota, who had long fought for holding military leaders accountable for crimes committed by the military dictatorship, was transferred from her criminal post to a civilian jurisdiction without any explanation, just as trials were slated to begin. Days later, the Uruguayan Supreme Court ruled that the dictatorship crimes could not be considered crimes against humanity and that the time within which to prosecute has expired. The ruling effectively means that most gross human rights violations committed under the dictatorship will go unpunished.

These two events created uproar in the nation, particularly because just two years ago an important decision came down from the Inter-American Court for Human Rights (IAHCR), calling for the reopening of trials and investigations into past abuses. While international pressure is combining with local protest movements to mount a social challenge against impunity in Uruguay, the local amnesty law from 1986 still stands, contradicting these international rulings. While the Court’s decision is binding, local judges need to know that there is public support for reopening investigations into the nation’s history and establishing the truth about this dark period in the past—for both the victims and their families, but also for the rest of the nation. With growing attention to these issues, stemming from the recent judge transfer and Supreme Court ruling, there is now an opportunity to demonstrate that these crimes must be punished once and for all. Over twenty-five years later, impunity needs to become a part of the nation’s past, not its future.

We need your help to do this. So what can you do?  Join Sandra, Valentin and many others, who the IACHR case was litigated on behalf of, in speaking out for justice in Uruguay.

• Follow #NuncaMasQue
• Like the ¿Nunca Más Qué? Facebook page and stay involved in the ongoing advocacy efforts
• Share the video with your friends and networks on Twitter and Facebook
• Email or show the video to your friends and family
• Write your representative and President Mujica about the need to reopen cases related to dictatorship crimes to bring truth and justice to Uruguay. Essentially ask them “Nunca MMás Qué?”
• Attend Uruguay’s launch of the videos to commemorate a year since the state acknowledgement of responsibility to the people of Uruguay on April 3.
• Translate the video into another language (We already have it in English, Spanish, and Portuguese!)
• Send us your thoughts at nuncamasque@newmediaadvocacy.org