7 33. On May 20, 2005, the Inter-American Commission submitted observations on the information and documentation presented before the Court in response to the President’s request of February 17, 2005, made pursuant to Article 45 of the Rules of Procedure. V PRELIMINARY OBJECTIONS FIRST PRELIMINARY OBJECTION The Court lacks jurisdiction ratione temporis because the American Convention does not apply to the Republic of Suriname in the present case Arguments of the State 34. The State has argued that the Court lacks jurisdiction ratione temporis to hear the present case on the basis of the following: a) the Commission has made a distinction between two categories of alleged human rights violations: i) alleged violations which took place before November 12, 1987, regarding Articles I, VII, IX, XXIII of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man; and ii) alleged violations of a continuous nature occurring after November 12, 1987, regarding Articles 1, 8 and 25 of the American Convention. These are “two clearly distinctive categories” of violations and thus should have been processed separately; b) a “Convention State” is an OAS member state that is a party to the American Convention. The Commission wrongly treated Suriname as a “Convention State” for the entire case, applying the Convention to the State ex post facto; c) events taking place at Moiwana Village on November 29, 1986, when Suriname was not yet a “Convention State,” would not constitute violations of Convention norms, “but perhaps a violation of the standards laid down in the Declaration.” Since the facts in question occurred before Suriname became a State Party to the Convention, the petitioners did not present the Commission with evidence of violations of that treaty; d) the Commission, then, should have dismissed the petition for failing to state facts tending to establish a violation under the Convention, as required under Article 47(b) of the American Convention; e) the Court only recognizes the possibility that forced disappearances, which are not at issue in the present case, may constitute continuing violations. The concept of the continuing violation, as applied to the alleged violations of the American Convention in the instant case, is “extreme, exceptional and against general accepted principles of international law”; and f) since Convention standards have never been violated, it would be impossible to have continuing violations of that treaty, as alleged by the Commission. Furthermore, in its merits report the Commission never