TORTURE IN EL SALVADOR:THE CENSORED REPORT FROM MARIONA PRISON

	  In late 1986,	a 165-page report was smuggled out of the Mariona
     men's prison in El Salvador. The report was compiled by five
     imprisoned	members	of the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador
     (CDHES). The report documents the "routine" and "systematic" use of at
     least 40 kinds of torture on political prisoners.
	  The report made three	main points: first, torture is systematic,
     not random; second, the methods of torture are becoming more clever;
     and finally, U.S. servicemen often	act as supervisors. What is new	to
     torture in	El Salvador, according to the study, is	that the use of
     torture, together with the	continued (although diminished)	use of
     death-squad kidnappings of	the "disappeared," are all a systematic
     part of of	the U.S. counterinsurgency program there.
	  The Marin Interfaith Task Force, from	Mill Valley, California,
     assembled the smuggled report from	Mariona	prison into a document
     titled "Torture in	El Salvador." Starting in September, 1986, the Task
     Force has tried to	generate media interest	in the story.  Suzanne
     Bristol of	the task force,	said the group sent the	report to the
     nation's major newspapers, including THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE
     WASHINGTON	POST, THE BOSTON GLOBE,	and the	LOS ANGELES TIMES, as well
     as	to the wire services. By February, 1987, when Alexander	Cockburn
     wrote his article for THE NATION, UPI had run a Spanish-language story
     and the report had	received coverage on Spanish-language radio, in
     Mexican periodicals and in	Europe.	Follow-up calls	to the above papers
     produced nothing, except for two letters in December from Art
     Seidenbaum	of the LOS ANGELES TIMES, who first wrote "You send plenty
     of	homework," and later wrote "We really have ... no staff	for making
     a 1500-word article out of	a large	series of reports."
	  As Cockburn noted, it	was "during this period, on November 22,
     Secretary of State	George Shultz asked Congress to	approve	nearly $7
     million in	police aid for El Salvador in 1987, providing the necessary
     certification that	the government of El Salvador had 'made significant
     progress during the six-month period preceding this determination in
     eliminating any human rights violations, including	torture,
     incommunicado detention ...'"
	  Apparently only one newspaper	gave the actual	report substantial
     coverage.	The SAN	FRANCISCO EXAMINER ran two excellent articles by
     free lance	journalist Ron Ridenhour, who quoted State Department
     spokesman James Callahan saying that the CDHES, the only Salvadoran
     human rights group	recognized by the United Nations, is a communist
     "front organization." (It was Ridenhour's charges that led to the
     revelations about the Army's massacre of civilians in My Lai.)
	  On October 26, 1987, assassins, probably belonging to	the
     Salvadoran	security forces, murdered Herbert Ernesto Anaya, head of
     the Salvadoran Human Rights Commission and	the last survivor of that
     commission's eight founders.
	  Anaya	also was one of	the five original researchers and authors
     of	the smuggled report from the Mariona men's prison.

	  SOURCES: THE NATION, 2/21/87,	"After the Press Bus Left," pp
     206-207, and THE NATION, 11/14/87,	"The Press and the Plan," pp
     546-547, both by Alexander	Cockburn; SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, 11/14/86,
     "In prison, Salvador rights panel works on," by Ron Ridenhour, p A-8;
     Marin Interfaith Task Force on Central America, 7/2/87 letter and
     various documents,	by Liz Erringer.