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Paraguay Security and Political Offenses
The tradition of authoritarian rule was deeply rooted in the
national history and rigorously maintained by the Stroessner
regime. The government tolerated only a narrow range of opposition
to its policies and moved quickly and forcefully to put down any
challenges that went beyond implicit but well-recognized limits,
that threatened to be effective, or that were raised by groups not
enjoying official recognition. The government pointed proudly to
the stability that Stroessner's rule brought to Paraguay, which had
been riven by years of political disruption. Noting that Paraguay
escaped the instability, political violence, and upheaval that had
troubled the rest of Latin America, government supporters dismissed
charges by human rights groups that such stability often came at
the cost of individual civil rights and political liberty.
The government relied on several pieces of security legislation
to prosecute security and political offenses. Principal among these
was the state-of-siege decree, provided for under Article 79 of the
Constitution. With the exception of a very few short periods, a
state of siege was in continuous effect from 1954 until April 1987.
After 1970 the state of siege was technically restricted to
Asunción. The restriction was virtually meaningless, however,
because the judiciary ruled that authorities could bring to the
capital those persons accused of security offenses elsewhere and
charge them under the state-of-siege provisions. Under the law, the
government could declare a state of siege lasting up to three
months in the event of international war, foreign invasion,
domestic disturbance, or the threat of any of these. Extensions had
to be approved by the legislature, which routinely did so. Under
the state of siege, public meetings and demonstrations could be
prohibited. Persons could be arrested and detained indefinitely
without charge.
The lapse of the state of siege in 1987 had little effect on the
government's ability to contain political opposition as of late
1988. Other security legislation could be used to cover the same
range of offenses. The most important of these provisions was Law
209, "In Defense of Public Peace and Liberty of Person." This law,
passed in 1970, lists crimes against public peace and liberty,
including the public incitement of violence or civil disobedience.
It specifies the limits on freedom of expression set forth in
Article 71 of the Constitution, which forbids the preaching of
hatred between Paraguayans or of class struggle. Law 209 raises
penalties set forth in earlier security legislation for involvement
in groups that seek to replace the existing government with a
communist regime or to use violence to overthrow the government. It
makes it a criminal offense to be a member of such groups and to
support them in any form, including subscribing to publications;
attending meetings or rallies; and printing, storing, distributing,
or selling print or video material that supports such groups. Law
209 also sets penalties for slandering public officials.
During the early 1980s, Law 209 was used to prosecute several
individuals the government accused of taking part in conspiracies
directed from abroad by Marxist-Leninist groups. Among these were
a group of peasants who hijacked a bus to the capital in 1980 to
protest being evicted from their land. In 1983 members of an
independent research institute that published data on the economy
and other matters were arrested after a journal published by the
institute carried articles calling for the formation of a student-
worker-peasant alliance. Human rights groups, critical of trial
procedures and the evidence in the two cases, questioned the
existence of a foreign-directed conspiracy, asserting instead that
the cases represented carefully selected attempts to discourage
organized opposition. During the mid-1980s, the government used Law
209 principally to charge political opponents with fomenting
hatred, defaming government officials, or committing sedition.
The lapse of the state of siege also had little effect on the
government's ability to handle security and political offenses
because authorities routinely detained political activists and
others without citing any legal justification at all. In these
cases, suspects were held for periods of hours, days, or weeks,
then released without ever being charged. In practice, persons
subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention had no recourse to
legal protection, and constitutional requirements for a judicial
determination of the legality of detention and for charges to be
filed within forty-eight hours were routinely ignored
(see The Criminal Justice System
, this ch.). According to the United States
Department of State, 253 political opposition activists were
detained at least overnight in 1987. Of these, thirty-nine were
held more for than seven days, and formal charges were filed in
only sixteen of the cases.
Many of those detained were taken to police stations, armed
forces installations, or to the Department of Investigations at
police headquarters in Asunción. There have been numerous well-
documented allegations of beating in the arrest process and of
torture during detention. The government has asserted that torture
was not a common practice and that any abuses were investigated and
their perpetrators prosecuted under the law. National newspapers
have carried rare accounts of a few such investigations and trials,
but continued allegations of torture suggested that the problem had
not been brought under control as of the late 1980s.
The government also limited the expression of opposition views
by denying permits for assemblies and refusing or cancelling
printing or broadcasting licenses. In early 1987, an independent
radio station suspended its broadcasts after the government refused
to do anything about a months-long illegal jamming of its
authorized frequencies. Meetings by the political opposition,
students, and labor groups required prior authorization by police,
who did not hesitate to block and repress assemblies that did not
have prior approval, sometimes beating leaders and participants.
The government has also restricted the travel of a few persons
involved in the political opposition or in labor groups. Some
foreign journalists and certain Paraguayans identified with the
opposition were expelled. During 1987 two persons then in exile
were allowed to return to Paraguay. The government claimed that a
third, a poet, was also free to return.
The police and the military were the main means of enforcement
of the regime. During the mid-1980s, however, armed vigilantes
associated with the Colorado Party broke up opposition meetings and
rallies, sometimes while police looked on. Such groups had been
active since the 1947 civil war but had been used relatively
infrequently after the 1960s. The principal group was a loosely
organized militia known as the Urban Guards (Guardias Urbanas),
whose members were linked with local party branches and worked
closely with the police. A second group was led by the head of the
Department of Investigations. The government did not appear
concerned by the reemergence of such groups and may in fact have
encouraged them. In September 1987, for example, vigilantes broke
up a panel discussion of opposition and labor members that was
being held in a Roman Catholic Church. The vigilantes used chains
and clubs to attack panel members and a parish priest who tried to
intervene. The minister of justice, who himself was the leader of
an anticommunist association that maintained its own security
group, later publicly commended the vigilantes.
Numerous sources of government opposition were targets of
security forces during the 1980s. Activity by these groups as well
as the violent suppression of such activity disturbed public order
on numerous occasions.
Foremost among those groups officially viewed as a security
threat was the Paraguayan Communist Party (Partido Comunista
Paraguayo--PCP). Since its inception, the Stroessner government has
justified the continuance of strict internal security policies,
particularly the prolongation of the state of siege, as necessary
measures to prevent a communist takeover. Thus, the PCP's efforts
to establish and maintain a power base in Paraguay had been
ineffective throughout the Stroessner regime. This anticommunist
fervor did not abate during the 1980s, however, even though the PCP
was completely isolated from the national population. As of mid-
1988, the party was estimated to have some 4,000 members, most
operating underground. Its leaders were either in exile or under
arrest. The party claimed to have organized new cells during the
1980s, but their existence could not be confirmed. Excluded from
the principal political opposition coalition, the PCP also claimed
to have set up its own political front and labor front in exile.
Both front organizations appeared, however, to exist only on paper,
if at all.
The party was founded in 1928 and has been illegal since then,
except for a short period in 1936 and again in the 1946-47 period
before the PCP became involved in the 1947 civil war. The party's
efforts to organize a general strike in 1959 were ineffective as
was its involvement in guerilla attacks in the early 1960s. Both
efforts drew harsh government reprisals. The party was believed to
have two factions. The original one, the PCP, was loyal to the
Soviet Union. A breakaway faction, the Paraguayan Communist Party--
Marxist-Leninist (Partido Comunista Paraguayo--Marxista-Leninista)
was formed in 1967; it was avowedly Maoist. In 1982 the government
arrested several persons that it identified as being members of the
pro-China wing of the PCP. Evidence in that case has been
criticized by international human rights groups, however, and it
was unclear as of late 1988 whether either wing of the PCP was
active in the country at all. The party held its last conference in
1971.
Another illegal opposition group was the Political-Military
Organization (Organización Político-Militar--OPM). The group was
founded in 1974 by leftist Catholic students and drew some support
from radical members of the clergy and Catholic peasant
organizations. The government made extensive arrests of OPM members
and sympathizers in 1976, after which operations of the movement
declined. It was unclear whether the OPM still existed as of mid-
1988, but the government continued to warn of its threat, claiming
that it was under communist control.
The activities of illegal opposition parties--including the
Colorado Popular Movement (Movimiento Popular Colorado--Mopoco),
the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (Partido Liberal Radical
Auténtico--PLRA), and the Christian Democratic Party (Partido
Demócrata Cristiano--PDC)--also drew official attention. Members of
illegal parties were subject to regular police surveillance. They
have alleged that their telephones were illegally tapped and their
correspondence intercepted. The unrecognized opposition parties
were routinely denied permits for meetings, so that any they held
usually were broken up, often violently, by police, who cited them
for illegally holding unauthorized assemblies. In 1979 these three
parties joined with a legally recognized opposition party, the PRF,
in a coalition known as the National Accord (Acuerdo Nacional).
Leaders of this coalition, whether members of legal or illegal
parties, were also subject to detentions and deportations
(see Opposition Parties
, ch. 4).
Independent labor unions were another object of surveillance by
government security forces in the 1980s. Most labor unions belonged
to the Paraguayan Confederation of Workers (Confederación Paraguaya
de Trabajadores), which was allied with the government and
carefully controlled by it
(see Interest Groups
, ch. 4). Although
workers not sponsored by the official confederation were not
authorized to organize freely, some independent labor unions had
been given official recognition. Their activities, however, were
closely monitored by the police, who sent representatives to all
meetings. Despite tight controls--Paraguayan law made it virtually
impossible to call a legal strike--a number of labor-related public
disturbances took place in the mid-1980s. In April 1986, for
instance, a peaceful protest by a medical workers' association in
Asunción was forcibly broken up by police. Vigilante groups
associated with the Colorado Party were also active in intimidating
and assaulting the doctors, nurses, and technicians involved, as
well as university students who joined in subsequent demonstrations
supporting the medical workers. Hundreds of demonstrators organized
by an independent workers' movement were clubbed and beaten in the
capital in May 1986. Continued demonstrations in support of the
jailed demonstrators and medical workers also drew police action.
In 1985 student demonstrations disturbed public order in the
capital for the first time in twenty-five years. An estimated 2,000
students clashed with police in April of that year. After a student
was shot to death in the clash, more demonstrations followed, and
part of the National University was closed for several days. Since
that time, students have been prominent in demonstrations organized
by several other groups.
Land tenure issues were also apparent in outbreaks of public
violence. Several incidents involved arrests by military and police
personnel of militant landless peasants who were squatting on
private or public land
(see Land Tenure
, ch. 3;
Interest Groups
, ch. 4). In 1986 three squatter incidents were publicized in the
local press; after military involvement in the shooting deaths of
two peasants was revealed, the military made efforts to leave
action in similar cases to the police. Local community leaders
chosen to represent peasants in negotiations with the government
over land tenure issues have also been subject to harassment by
local police and judicial officials. Reports have appeared in both
the national and international press about abuses of the rights of
the nation's small, unassimilated Indian population. Most
frequently, abuses were alleged to occur in land disputes. The
abuses appeared to result from the relative powerlessness of the
Indian population vis-à-vis local landowners and the remoteness of
tribal areas.
The government controlled most print media, both television
channels, and most radio stations and tolerated only limited
criticism from the press. Major media usually avoided criticizing
the president, his family, the military, and key civilian leaders.
Topics related to official corruption and national security were
also generally avoided, and coverage of the political opposition
was strictly limited. Violations of these rules were answered with
force eventually--sometimes immediately--by the government
(see The Media
, ch. 4).
During the mid-1980s, the Roman Catholic Church emerged as a
leader of antigovernment forces. The church was openly opposed to
the Stroessner regime during the 1960s and early 1970s, until the
government cracked down, sending troops into the private Catholic
University on more than one occasion and eventually leaving it in
shambles. The harsh government response was followed by several
years of relative quiet from the church. During the mid-1980s,
church officials offered to serve as a bridge for the
reconciliation of the government and the opposition but were turned
down by the government. Roman Catholic bishops also began to take
a larger role in pressing for a transition to democracy and
investigation of human rights abuses. The wave of antigovernment
protests in 1986 and the government's forcible response, however,
appeared to have inspired the church to take a more overt political
stance. In May 1986, the archbishop of Asunción announced a series
of protests that culminated in the ringing of church bells
throughout the capital. Some 800 priests and members of religious
orders, joined by members of the opposition parties and other
people, led a march of silence in the capital in October 1987. The
government permitted the crowd--estimated at 40,000--to proceed
peacefully. Provincial clergy, long active among the rural poor,
also have been involved in land tenure disputes and in setting up
peasant cooperative enterprises. Activities in both areas have been
met with displeasure by local landowners and have resulted in
clashes with the military and with local police. Following the
government's closure in 1984 of ABC Color, the Roman
Catholic Church's newspaper, Sendero, became an important
source of information on opposition activities.
Data as of December 1988
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