Denunciation

Adolfo Perez Esquivel of the Service of Peace and Justice, who denounces the massive violations of human rights, receives the Nobel Peace Prize.
In his acceptance speech, he speaks "of Latin America where we experience constant violations of the human rights of the people. The violence is expressed toward the disappeared, the prisoners, the tortured, the exiles, the lack of freedom of the press, etc. ... it is not only with the attacks against the rights of persons that we must deal. We must analyze also, in all the dimensions of this reality, the deep structural causes which generate these conflict situations. For that, the struggle for the dignity of the individual must consider society as much as the individual in all which has to do with the development of the rights of the people.
"But this same continent and these same human beings live, besides, in the hope of making their own history. And to this immense task, where I humbly include myself, we take no more than our own hands and great faith.
"To those of you also involved in this struggle on behalf of the poor, I want to bring you the image of this deeply absorbing situation and its significance for world peace.
"Latin America does not see itself in the same way, but finds itself caught between an economic-political system and an international social system in profound transformation. Its image of violence reflects the violence of our contemporary world. Its injustices are bound up within an unjust international system, a system whose mechanisms, in the words of John Paul II, 'are mechanisms encountered impregnated not with an authentic humanism, but with materialism producing an international standard with the rich ever richer at the expense of the poor ever poorer'.
"It is necessary to create the conditions that permit displacing the mechanisms which secure the domination of one country over another. I want to affirm, together with our Latin American pastors in the meeting at Puebla, that in the ability to live together, '... all human beings hold the common good as fundamental, consistent with the ever more fraternal realization of common dignity which does not use some persons as tools for the benefit of others, and that all be disposed to sacrifice for some particular good ends'. This common dignity necessarily implies the existence of liberty.
"And for us liberty is that inalienable capacity that all humans alike have at their disposal.
"This is the capacity that permits the building of communion and participation which encourage human beings to relate fully with the world, with their brothers and sisters and with God.
"I see with concern that this new international system, marked as it is by the existence of great multinational corporations, is far from increasing participation and improving channels of expression for the majority. What is essential are new constructs that allow political participation, eliminating the distance between the governors and the governed, that support the privileges of minorities, and do not hold on to the old, the known and worn-out structures of injustice."

Horacio Verbitsky's Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior