Rights Monitors Cite Rise of Harassment in El Salvador

A campaign of intimidation and violent harassment is threatening foreigners’ ability to monitor the human rights situation in El Salvador, a leading rights group said Thursday.

“The increased frequency of harassment of foreign humanitarian workers in recent days poses a grave threat to continued human rights monitoring and documentation at a time when abuses are on the rise,” said a report issued by the New York-based Americas Watch organization.

It lists the names of 31 people, 13 of them U.S. citizens, alleged to have been detained and, in many cases, mistreated by security forces since leftist rebels launched a major offensive here two weeks ago.

At least seven were physically abused or openly beaten by soldiers, including an American woman who was allegedly hit with a rifle butt, kicked, sexually harassed and robbed, the report said.

Cilia Medrano, an official with the independent Salvadoran Human Rights Commission, said Thursday that local humanitarian groups were also the victims of a well-orchestrated campaign of harassment in El Salvador.

Such abuses are commonplace in El Salvador, where right-wing paramilitary groups and deaths squads have operated with impunity for years, rights groups say.

But the Americas Watch report stressed that “in detention, foreigners rarely suffer the kinds of gross physical mistreatment to which Salvadorans are often subjected.”