CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE SERGIO GARCÍA RAMÍREZ
IN RELATION TO THE JUDGMENT OF THE INTER-AMERICAN COURT OF HUMAN
RIGHTS IN THE CASE OF ANZUALDO CASTRO V. PERU
OF SEPTEMBER 22, 2009
1. The Inter-American Court has made an excellent development of case-law in a
particularly relevant subject for human rights, frequented on multiple occasions: the
forced disappearance of persons, as referred to in the Judgment in the case of
Anzualdo Castro, issued on September 22, 2009, to which I attach this opinion. It is a
violation – or a set of violations, combined in only one legal precept- receiver of
particularly horrible facts, which had been widely condemned by the Inter-American
jurisdiction, constantly and unanimously.
2. The Judgment in Anzualdo Castro and my personal opinion come on top of this
tendency to condemn without exception. Forced disappearances correspond to a
practice that has been common under strong authoritarian regimes established beyond
the strict limits that marked the democratic criminal system in the Rule of Law. This is
related, though closely related, to the criminal Law of the enemy, who creates a body
of law to punish, using special provisions, the opponents (the “non-citizens”). The
disappearance and other expressions of the same nature react in disregard of the Law,
in an automatic and brutal form: they do not judge, they eliminate.
3. The forced disappearance constitutes - together with extra-legal executions, torture,
massacres and systematic alterations of due process- the more characteristic
expression of an overwhelming and defiant authoritarianism that seems to be in
retreat. However, it always lies ahead of us, waiting for the mistakes or fatigue of the
Rule of Law to recover territories from which it has retreated.
4. The issue of forced disappearance has been present in the first cases brought to this
Court's attention and it continued appearing in other cases, like a constant pain.
Reference is made to such issue in some reservations to the American Convention or
certain restrictions to the subject-matter jurisdiction of the Tribunal, imposed upon the
signing of it or acknowledgment of its advisory jurisdiction, limits that the tribunal
itself has examined on previous occasions. The same issue appears, certainly, among
the topics that have been subjects of reflection and controversies within the realm of
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