STREET CHILDREN
Latin America and the Caribbean

LA NACION (San Jose, Costa Rica)
20 August 1995

DREAD IN EL SALVADOR:
Calderón Sol Deplores the Violence

San Salvador (ACAN-EFE) - - The reappearance of armed, clandestine groups and protests to carry out demobilization of the army, dissatisfion with fulfillment of the peace agreements, threaten the stability of El Salvador, that enjoys democratic advances from the end the war, in January 1992.

The president of the Republic, Armando Caldéron Sol, deplored yesterday the emergence of a new clandestine group, called the Revolutionary Front for the Defense of the People, that in a communique sent to the press threatened with attempting "corrupt and exploitative" acts against the national economy and officials.

This is the fifth clandestine group that emerged from what is going on this year.

The other four, among them the Black Shade, emerged with the objectives of combatting delinquency, according to its own communiques.

Up until now, the Black Shade has been responsible for the assassinations of more than a score of supposed delinquents, to the point that humanitarian organizations have denounced the execution of several "street children" in the center of the Salvadoran capital, whose authorship yet it has not been discovered.

Calderón Sol has reiterated that it will not permit groups or persons to take justice into their own hands and that those responsible for assassinations will be punished with all the rigor of the law.

Also, he said that the threats of groups shielded in anonymity are products of "mental illness," but recognized that they constitute "a serious" danger for the peace process.

The leader requested this week that the Attorney General investigate the "radical groups" that promote "destabilization." Among those mentioned is the Association for Demobilization of the Armed Forces (ADEFAES).

This organization announced "violent actions" to the press in fulfillment of the economic benefits they were given in the peace agreements.


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