8
guarantee of security for the participants and a limit to the arbitrariness of
authorities;
c)
to attribute powers to hear a case to international bodies of control and
supervision, that corpus juris has not made use of a single formula, that unites all
suppositions that may be practiced, but instead it has used different texts –five, up
to now, as indicated supra--, that must be analyzed in light of the body within
which they are included and the legal code in which they appear, taking into
account the object and purpose of the first and the latter;
d)
that interpretation is made within the limits determined by the ACHR, as
governing legal code of the body, and the specific instruments that are trying to be
applied; one and the other may limit the knowledge of a body of specific extremes
or allow an ample analysis of possible violations. In order to establish the complete
panorama in this matter, under specific suppositions, we would have to consider, in
its case, the reserves or limitations to competence formulated by the States;
e)
the interpretation must fulfill the previsions of Article 29 of the ACHR,
embrace the criterion pro personae of International Law on Human Rights, favor
the complete effectiveness of the treaty in attention to its object and purpose and
contribute to the affirmation and strengthening of the Inter-American System in
this subject.
USE OF FORCE ON PERSONS DEPRIVED OF FREEDOM
33.
Now, the Court focuses its attention once more on a recurring matter, one
on which it has made emphasis throughout numerous rulings, and even in some
observations before political bodies of the Organization of American States. It is
violations that have occurred in a criminal institution, whose occupants are subject,
almost completely, to the control of the State –de jure and de facto--, guarantor of
the observance of the rights of who are in that situation of special dependency. This
is associated to, in order to make up the panorama of the facts contemplated in the
Judgment, the use of force by State agents, as an instrument to carry out certain
determinations and exercise the control of a group of people in the exceptions and
conditions that have been indicated in the Judgment itself. Therefore, the
circumstances of this case have two components: on one hand, reclusion and on
the other the use of force. The violations are projected in these two dimensions.
34.
As has been said –and it is convenient to insist on this--, what characterizes
a State of Law within the framework of a democratic society and in attention of the
values and principles that characterize it, is the acknowledgment or assignment of
functions and roles, duly characterized, to the State, society, and individuals, and
the specific relationship, with all its expressions and consequences, that exists
between those three subjects. The nature of those functions and the nature of that
relationship –and its decisive test, if we may use the expression— are especially
visible in critical circumstances, such as those that are set forth when the State
authority intervenes, with all its power, in the custody of the accused, the execution
of convictions, and the control of collective, spontaneous, or provoked movements.
35.
The Court has examined these matters in several judgments, both
declarative and convicting, which set the scope of the individual’s rights and the
duties and activities of the State, and the corresponding reparations based on the
violations. The State’s duty – with its consisting powers — to provide the
compliance of the provisions legally issued and ensure public order has never been
denied. But never has it admitted that said duty be exercised in an unlimited or
overflowing manner, which may reach the extreme we now have before us and that