Contras Stand for Human Rights in Nicaragua : Movement’s Emphasis Is Aimed at Winning Over the People

When I became executive director of the Human Rights Commission of the United Nicaraguan Opposition, I expected that U.S. journalists and human-rights activists would rush to us in droves for information. As a labor lawyer in the anti-Somoza struggle and then as a legal adviser to Nicaragua’s revolutionary junta just after the fall of the dictatorship, I had come to think that human rights were an urgent concern of U.S. foreign policy.

I have learned since that this is not really so. Many conservatives in the United States think of human rights as one of the proprietary concerns of the Left--not a serious matter, but something that, if you’re not careful, can be used to embarrass you while you are fighting communism. Many liberals just cannot comprehend the abuses of a Marxist-Leninist government. Such systems, in the current liberal view, at least achieve a kind of peace and order. Communism, unlike the more primitive forms of undemocratic rule, does not flaunt its brutality and repression.

A result of all this is that discussion of human rights in the United States is thoroughly pervaded by your own prevailing political ideologies. There is little room for consideration of the human-rights issue as we in the Nicaraguan resistance movement encounter it. As a result, you have paid our efforts virtually no attention.

This is unfortunate. Not only do we need your support and technical expertise; you might even be able to learn something from our experience.

We are convinced that human rights, far from being something that we need to keep a wary eye on, are the critical issue for the success of our struggle. We know that our movement will not succeed if we are forced to contest the Sandinistas on strictly military grounds. Our only hope is that the Nicaraguan people will support us, as the Filipino people supported Corazon Aquino, because they recognize that we offer them a more civilized way of life. Human rights, for us, are not a burden that the anti-communist cause must carry. They are our most precious asset.

This obliges us to be honest about our problems. We acknowledge that there is a strain of cynicism among our people, who have never really known a system of justice and for whom the term “human rights” has often been a propaganda slogan used by leaders who commit terrible wrongs.

When our guerrilla forces are in the field, anger, fear or plain exhaustion will inevitably challenge their better political instincts. The nature of our struggle also brings difficulties that far exceed those of a conventional army. Circumstances may make it extremely difficult to investigate alleged human-rights violations, or to punish individuals once they are convicted.

The human rights commission, which I head, is working both on a general strategy and on practical procedures for dealing with our special problems. First, we are determined that human-rights orientation must be a fundamental element in the military training of our troops. We expect to encounter resistance from some military commanders, who understandably have come to perceive the human-rights issue as a weapon for the Sandinistas. But the top political and military leaders of our movement have been receptive to our decision.

We plan to send a trained human-rights officer with every unit of resistance troops in the field. This officer’s primary responsibility will be to our human rights commission, not to the military command. His job will be to provide continuous advice to military officers, give orientation to the troops and invoke disciplinary measures in the event of any violation of our code of conduct.

The difficulties that this human-rights officer will face are obvious: At times he will have to override the natural loyalties that arise among men in combat. He will find it hard to impose punishment on violators, who often are a month or more distant from their base camps. But he also will have advantages that often are not present in conventional armies. Our troops are volunteers, not conscripts. Their field officers are chosen by the men. Most important, all can understand that the success of our effort depends on a high order of discipline and our ability to persuade the population--even, and perhaps especially, the soldiers of the army that we fight--that we represent a humane alternative to Sandinista totalitarianism.

There will be abuses--this is a civil war. But liberals should not think that the totalitarian alternative represents nothing worse than a morose tranquility. Remember what happened to the Miskito Indians. At their first opportunity the Sandinistas uprooted and violated these gentle people to make way for “the New Nicaraguan man.” Central America got its first taste of 20th-Century inquisition--the experience of the kulaks under Josef Stalin and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The armed resistance has forced the Sandinistas to slow down such experiments. The contras , you see, are Nicaragua’s human-rights movement.