5
husband "being burned or begging for help"), which have been transformed to her into
"a permanent state", which, - she added, - "will go with me into the tomb"20. As her
husband has remained disappeared for so many years, - she added, - "I have the need
to have him in my arms (...) and to lay him into his tomb (...), to leave him in his
grave with affection, (...) I need to have him (...) in my arms once more"21.
11.
In my Separate Opinion in the paradigmatic case of the "Street Children"
(Villagrán Morales and Others versus Guatemala, Reparations, 2001), I underlined the
importance, for an international tribunal of human rights, to bear in mind the intensity
of human suffering, and even the impact of this latter into the social milieu as a whole,
in the following terms:
"(...) Even if those responsible for the established order do not perceive it, the suffering of
the excluded ones is ineluctably projected into the whole social corpus. (...) Human
suffering has a dimension which is both personal and social. Thus, the damage caused to
each human being, however humble he might be, affects the community itself as a whole.
(...) The victims are multiplied in the persons of the surviving close relatives, who,
furthermore, are forced to live with the great pain inflicted by the silence, the indifference
and the oblivion of the others" (párr. 22).
12.
Human suffering, moreover, is projected in time, as reckoned by the Court in
the present Judgment in the Bámaca Velásquez case, to the effects of the reparations,
in keepint in mind teh declaration of an expert according to which "the forced
disappearance of a person generates a deep psychological impact in their relatives (...).
The pain is never lost, and despite the passing of time any minor thing remindful of the
disappeared person (...) is sufficient to discharge again absolutely the whole previous
suffering" (par. 21). The expert further declared that there are "testimonies of survivors
of other situations who after 50 years still remember and still feel pain for what
happened, or who still shed tears to think about it"22.
13.
Human dignity finds expression also in the respect for the mortal remains of
those who have already crossed the extreme limit of life. The indifference as to human
destiny (and all the symbolism which surrounds this latter) is a way of violating the
right to dignity. In this respect, Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, has pointed out
with lucidity that "the two great mysteries - birth and death - are what all human
beings have in common. Only the path is different. And it is incumbent upon us to
humanize it. (...) If there is a word which defines and illustrates the fear of our
contemporaries, it is the intolerance which is expressed in humiliation. It continues to
threaten all that our civilization has acquired in five thousand years. (...) Every human
being has the right to dignity. To violate this right, is to humiliate the human being.
(...) One ought to fight indifference. It only helps the persecutor, the opressor, (...)
never the victim"23.
20
.
CtIADH, Transcripción de la Audiencia Pública sobre Reparaciones en el Caso Bámaca Velásquez de
28-29 de Noviembre de 2001, pp. 19 and 21-22, and cf. p. 113 (internal circulation).
21
.
Ibid., p. 26.
22
.
CtIADH, Transcripción de la Audiencia Pública..., op. cit. supra n. (19), p. 117.
23
.
E. Wiesel, "Contre l'indifférence", in Agir pour les droits de l'homme au XXIe. siècle (ed. F. Mayor),
Paris, UNESCO, 1998, pp. 87-90.