Salvador Rights Abuses on Both Sides Decried

The human rights group Americas Watch on Thursday reported what it called a terrifying increase in human rights violations by both sides in El Salvador’s civil war during the first half of 1985.

In its seventh such report since 1982, the group said that rightist death squad killings, which numbered only 39 in the last half of 1984, rose to 81 in the first six months of 1985. For the same periods, it said, killings of civilians by leftist guerrillas rose from 29 to 53.

An Americas Watch representative charged at a news conference that President Jose Napoleon Duarte’s government largely ignores the killings of Salvadorans and refuses to arrest suspected death squad members.

Aryeh Neier, vice chairman of the human rights organization, said that the Salvadoran regime has gained a propaganda advantage in the United States since leftist rebels machine-gunned two sidewalk cafes in San Salvador’s Zona Rosa (Pink Zone) district June 19, killing 13 people, four of them off-duty U.S. Marines.

The report characterized the attack as a “political assassination” and said it caused public outrage in the United States similar to that provoked by the murder of four American churchwomen by Salvadoran soldiers in 1980.

“In both cases, it is unfortunate that only the killings of Americans in El Salvador gets attention in the United States,” Neier said.

In one area, the report said, El Salvador has improved its human rights record. It said no mass killings by government security forces have been reported since the alleged slaying by government troops of nearly 100 people a year ago in rural northeastern El Salvador.

But it decried a Salvadoran government policy that it said has forced the evacuation of civilians from rebel-dominated areas. Similarly, it condemned the kidnaping by guerrillas of 20 local mayors last spring in an effort to trade the hostages for imprisoned rebels. One mayor was killed and 13 remain captive but the report said the effort failed for “lack of popular support.”

Abuses by one side cannot justify those of the other, the report stressed repeatedly, but it asserted that the guerrillas have attempted to correct some of their policies after Americas Watch representatives registered criticisms.