Memories of February 27:

...None of the victims in the cases that are in the courts were political activists, save one, thus putting the lie to initial government claims that professional agitators had provoked the riots...

...To prevent a breakdown of public order, in early November President Carlos Andres Perez explicitly forbade the occupation of public buildings and streets...

...Even beyond the importance of establishing the innocence of those who were gunned down is the paramount principle of protecting the right to life of all Venezuela's citizens...

...SIC editor, Father Jose Lazcano, told me in August that, on the basis of the testimony of people who worked in different assistance centers throughout Caracas and elsewhere, there were as many as 2,000 fatalities...

...STEVE ELLNER...

...One case involves the alleged deaths of three dozen people who were waiting in the morning to use public phones to report that they would not be able to get to work that day...

...The dire poverty that, according to official statistics, afflicts a majority of Venezuelans makes a recurrence of February 27 possible at any moment...

...The house of Mederos's mother, who is a leading member of the Committee of Relatives of the Victims of February-March (COFAVIC), was subsequently illegally raided by the police, most likely in an effort to intimidate her...

...The sole survivor of that incident, who was permanently maimed, is the plaintiff...

...It was a night that the Venezuelan people should be proud of and remember as an experience in which they were the protagonists...

...The attorney general's order-if it is carried out-will allow next of kin to locate the remains of their deceased loved ones...

...The attorney general's ruling is based on Article 65 of the Constitution and Article 18 of the "International Convention of Civil and Political Rights" that sanctifies these practices subject only to considerations of public health, order, and morality...

...It is important that this vision not be instilled...

...In the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Peru, and elsewhere in Latin America, spontaneous riots have become an important form of popular protest, perhaps demonstrating the inadequate mobilization capacity of leftist parties...

...In fact increases in transportation fares and gasoline prices in 1990 have sparked dozens of lesser disturbances that have forced the government to call out the military...

...In fact, their resistance may well be the product of fear that official statistics, which place the number of deaths during the disturbances at 276, will be discredited...

...Indeed, on the first anniversary of the disturbances, the monthly Jesuit magazine SIC devoted a special issue to the subject, under the title, "February 27: No to Oblivion...

...Although student disorders are nothing new in Venezuela, protests of the urban poor against deficient public services, in which political party leaders are notably absent, is a recent phenomenon that has become an everyday occurrence...

...Do Not Hand Over...

...In a number of the lawsuits, the victims were teen-agers and even children...

...Although the disturbances were triggered by increases in public transportation fares, they were really a popular reaction to the steady deterioration in living conditions over the decade and austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund...

...The issues raised by organizations such as COFAVIC and the priests who publish SIC are of great relevance for Venezuela, as for the rest of the continent...

...The recent decision is a major victory for human rights groups that had called for clarification of the circumstances surrounding the deaths, punishment of those responsible, and compensation for those who received permanent injuries...

...Attached to a leg was a tag with the words...

...Human rights groups have maintained a relatively low profile, in part because they are aware that February 27 is a sharp sting in the memory of influential sectors, whose image of Venezuela as South America's most stable and pacific democracy was turned upside down...

...While, as of November, five verdicts have been reached by civilian judges condemning city police for abuse of authority during the disturbances, the military courts (which have been assigned most of the suits) have not rendered a single decision...

...As of November, however, the Health Ministry has not granted permission for the exhumations...

...The problem is that February 27 was the first time in decades that Venezuela faced an emergency situation like this...

...In April, the Supreme Court agreed to consider COFAVIC's request that the cases be tried in civilian rather than military courts...

...Although the regular judicial system is subject to the same bureaucratic and corrupt practices that plague the rest of the nation's public sphere, the impartiality of military justice is even more suspect...

...Unidentified...

...Nearly two years later, on October 23,1990, Venezuela's attorney general ordered the exhumation of the skeletons of the untold number of unidentified victims who had been interred in common burial pits...

...The one exception was Cristanto Mederos, a poet and member of the nation's second largest party, the Social Christian COPEI...

...Naturally, the religious implications of the demand for exhumation is of special concern to the church...

...Military judges have also refused to cooperate with family members and human rights groups in providing basic information regarding the progress of the cases...

...In spite of considerable resistance, they were able to scour the common graves and succeeded in locating his body, which was seriously disfigured, apparently by the impact of machine gun butts...

...Government authorities claim that disinterment on such a massive scale would represent a health hazard...

...Lazcano told me that for them, "time is not a factor since they are determined to see the lawsuits to the end...

...Civilian judges are reluctant to take these cases because they-like security forces and the public in general at the time-are ignorant regarding the limits of the suspension decree...

...Other commentators put the figure as high as 3,000...

...Relatives who resided in a neighboring house are willing to testify that Mederos was slain in his bed and to identify his military assassins...

...The dilatory tactics of Venezuelan judicial authorities in some thirty cases involving people who were gunned down during the disturbances have not deterred family members from carrying on their cases...

...COFAVIC scored a small victory earlier this year...

...The decree, however, did not give security forces carte blanche, nor were international rights ever annulled...

...Even for those who see February 27 as an unmitigated tragedy, the need to define acceptable behavior for authorities during emergency situations has emerged as an important issue...

...After more than twenty-four hours of widespread looting, security forces entered poor neighborhoods and opened fire indiscriminately during the remainder of the week, which was when most of the casualties took place...

...According to Father Arturo Sosa, a leading political scientist who is director of SIC, "the objective of military aggression on February 27 was to produce visceral fear in the memory of people so that they would realize just how far the dominant elites are willing to go....The established order wants people to feel ashamed [of what happened...

...February 27 was not an 'excess' or a 'bad night.' It was a protest in which people were obliged to utilize extraordinary channels...

...This is particularly true because most of the victims of February 27 were bystanders who did not participate in the rioting and looting...

...Considering that military judges are generally less overburdened with work than civilian judges, this negligence is especially unjustifiable...

...On that day in 1989 spontaneous riots swept most of the nation's urban centers...

...One of COFAVIC's lawyers, Liliana Ortega, justifies her organization's position on grounds that "at no moment during the week of February 27 was civilian justice suspended, even though certain constitutional guarantees were by presidential decree...

...Human rights groups, in calling for the measure, invoked the principle of religious liberty: the right to sepulcher relatives in family graves and engage in the funeral rites of their choice...