Madrid - It was a familiar sight: a digger penetrating into
soil containing a mass grave dating from Spain's 1936-39 civil war,
while family members of those who were believed to be buried there
quietly looked on.
However, the exhumation of the remains of four people in the
northern town of Santa Marta de Tera differed from previous ones in
Spain in that it had not been organized privately, only with the
permission of sanitary police, but rather had been authorized by a
judge.
Families of people killed by supporters of General Francisco
Franco during the war or his ensuing dictatorship hope that the case
will set a precedent, though they do not count on that.
If the Spanish judiciary as a whole decides not to back the
opening of Franco's mass graves, 'we will take our case to European
courts,' vows Emilio Silva of the Association for the Recovery of
Historic Memory (ARMH), which has spearheaded the exhumations since
2000.
Neither the judiciary nor the government have shown willingness to
'do something as simple and human as burying the dead' of the Franco
era, Silva complained in a telephone interview with the German Press
Agency dpa.
'Some people have been waiting for over 60 years' to give their
relatives dignified burials, which is 'a shame for Spain,' said
Silva, whose grandfather was one of the first among Franco's victims
to be dug up and identified with DNA tests.
Spain's National Court has become internationally known for its
judges' eagerness to tackle human rights violations in other
countries, ranging from Latin America to the Middle East and the US
prison camp in Guantanamo.
Yet 70 years after the end of the civil war, Spain is still
finding it difficult to deal with its own human rights record.
Franco is blamed for the disappearances of more than 100,000
people during the war, which was sparked by his uprising against the
republican government, and the dictatorship, which ended with his
death in 1975.
But when National Court judge Baltasar Garzon tried to launch an
investigation into Franco's abuses in 2008, he was forced to drop the
case under pressure from prosecutors.
Attempts to open a discussion about Franco's crimes are criticized
by the conservative opposition People's Party (PP), which has distant
links with Francoism.
The PP says such a discussion would reopen old wounds and divide
the nation.
After the civil war, the Franco regime honoured its own dead, but
the republican victims were ignored. Tens of thousands of Franco
opponents are believed to lie in anonymous mass graves around the
country.
Garzon ordered the opening of 19 mass graves, including one
believed to contain the bones of poet Federico Garcia Lorca, but the
order was suspended.
Garzon transferred his investigation into Franco's crimes to
regional judges, but none except for Tania Chico, who is responsible
for Santa Marta de Tera, has authorized exhumations amid confusion
over who has jurisdiction over them.
Garzon said Franco's 1936 uprising amounted to a crime 'against
high organisms of the nation,' which would place his abuses under the
jurisdiction of the National Court.
But the court finally decided that Franco's crime was rebellion,
which meant that regional courts were responsible.
Garzon's critics also say courts cannot investigate crimes
committed by people who are already dead, and point out that Franco's
collaborators were granted a collective amnesty in 1977.
A Granada judge who was asked to take a decision on Lorca's grave
handed the responsibility back to the National Court, describing
Franco's abuses as crimes against humanity.
While judges continue squabbling over such questions, ageing
children of Franco's victims are increasingly losing hope of
restoring the honour of their loved ones, Silva says.
The ARMH and similar groups have unearthed the bones of more than
4,000 people with the help of volunteers and usually without official
subsidies.
In 2007, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's socialist
government passed a law to rehabilitate Franco's victims. The initial
version of the law, however, had been watered down, under pressure
from conservative sectors.
The law only obliges the authorities to assist associations
opening mass graves, without assuming the main responsibility for the
exhumations.
Judicial support for the exhumations would step up pressure on the
authorities to get involved, but Silva expects only a part of the
regional judges to follow Chico's example.
'The Supreme Court or Constitutional Court will have to put an end
to the judicial confusion' by clarifying the judges' role, he says.
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