Mags GarganPresident Higgins praised Trócaire on state visit to in El Salvador
During an official state visit to El Salvador last week, President Michael D. Higgins praised the work of Trócaire and Irish missionaries working for human rights and supporting the poor in the Central American country.
President Higgins first visited the El Salvador during the Civil War in the 1970s and 1980s, and he said that confronted “with the example of Trócaire and other NGOs, of the Irish missionaries, and of Bishop Eamon Casey” he felt compelled to report human rights abuses in the country to the rest of the world.
President Higgins became involved in the Irish El Salvador Support Committee, which was set up by Trócaire staff and the families of Irish Franciscan priests living in the country, and played a crucial role in highlighting the massacre in Mozote in 1981. Thanks to an international campaign in 2012 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found the Salvadoran State to be responsible for the deliberate killings of over 800 people, over half of whom were children, as part of a “systematic plan of repression”.
Honoured
President Higgins was formally honoured in El Salvador last week for his human rights work when he received a state award from President Mauricio Funes and an award from the Rector of Universidad Centroamericana.
Sally O’Neill, Trócaire’s Head of Region for Latin America, said President Higgins is still thought of with “great affection in this small Latin American country”.
“Today, few Irish people are aware of how significant a role President Higgins had in bringing to an end one of the bloodiest chapters in recent Latin American history. In El Salvador, however, he is remembered for his role in exposing some of the horrors of the country’s darkest days,” she said.
“Many of the people he dealt with in the 1980s are today in government and they have not forgotten how he fearlessly stood up for them when they were at their lowest ebb.”
Speaking in Universidad Centroaméricana, President Higgins said he was “deeply honoured” as President of Ireland, to pay tribute to the memory of six Jesuits who were murdered on the campus in 1989, when he visited their tomb in the university chapel.
President Higgins also visited the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero in San Salvador Cathedral, who was murdered after speaking out against government repression, and he described the archbishop as “an illuminating icon not only for the Church but for the oppressed of the world and those in solidarity with them”.