Defending the Defenders

Human rights activists constantly have their motives questioned. It practically comes with the job. When they defend the idea that basic legal rights apply to everyone, even to those who have committed crimes or violent acts, they're accused of secretly sympathizing with such people.

It's an outrageous charge, whether it's leveled at lawyers defending the rights of prisoners in Guantánamo or groups in Latin America criticizing abuses by security forces. The fact that rights groups also criticize -- regularly and loudly and sometimes at great risk to their safety -- the atrocities committed by rogue groups ranging from Al Qaeda to Shining Path never gets noticed by those who make such accusations.

It's not often that this dynamic reaches such an intemperate level as in the current controversy in Peru over the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos, or Aprodeh. The country's vice president called Francisco Soberón, Aprodeh's founder and a distinguished human rights lawyer, a "notorious rabble-rouser who will be held accountable one day by the Peruvian state." President Alan García called him a traitor to the nation. Other government officials have called for Aprodeh to be shut down.

The cause of this ire is a letter that Aprodeh submitted to the European Parliament, at the parliament's request, advising against adding a now-defunct guerrilla group, the MRTA, to the European Union's list of international terrorist organizations.  MRTA has been completely inactive for at least eight years. That's why it was not already on the European list; nor is it listed as a terrorist group by the United States. The State Department's full report on terrorism on Peru makes no mention at all of MRTA. It's history.

Aprodeh's letter clearly condemns the acts of terror committed by MRTA when it was active (in the late 1980s and 1990s). So why the anger directed at Aprodeh? 

The group spearheaded the extradition of former president Alberto Fujimori, who is now on trial in Lima on charges of human rights abuses and corruption. The Fujimori trial is an example of what a better Latin America will look like -- a former strongman being held accountable for his actions in an open, transparent process.  But it has earned Aprodeh some powerful enemies, including a leader of Fujimori's party in the Peruvian Congress, a source for one very impressionable columnist. (Here's an answer.) 

Francisco Soberón is in Washington this week and will give a talk today at the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), together with Eduardo Bertoni, executive director of the Washington-based Due Process of Law Foundation. The event is sponsored by CEJIL and WOLA.