130. In short, neither in the individual or social realm can we neglect our memory,111
which, in our days, emerges stronger than before because of the awakening of human
conscience for the vital need to remember and venerate the victims of human cruelty.
The memorial “The Eye That Cries”, is one of the symbols of the tragedy lived by the
Peruvian people during the last two decades of the XX century, which generated deep
wounds that have not yet healed. We cannot avoid that “The Eye That Cries” continue
crying, since each human being and each social means must learn to live with their own
area of guilt.
XI.
The Right to a Fair Trial (National and International) as a Right to
the Realization of Justice, and as an Imperative of the Jus Cogens.
131. With this, I go on to my final considerations regarding a matter that has been my
flag throughout all my years as a Full Judge of the Inter-American Court: the right of
human beings to a fair trial – both national and international – as a right to the realization
of justice, thus becoming an imperative of the jus cogens. The present case of the Castro
Castro Prison highlights this matter, in order to achieve the overcoming of private
vengeance by public justice, - as can be concluded from Aeschylus’ The Oresteia.
132. It is not my objective to reiterate here everything I have written in this sense, but
instead point out some aspects regarding the matter, which become especially relevant
within the context of the present Judgment of Interpretation in the case of the Castro
Castro Prison. The right to a fair trial lato sensu (the right to jurisdictional assistance) is a
basic pillar of the protection of human rights. It is enshrined in the American Convention,
with regard to both the national (Articles 25 and 8) and international (Article 44) realm,
being a real right to Law.
1.
The Right to a Fair Trial Lato Sensu.
sociology or economics. Owing to the specific features of the partitions, the link between
politics and literature in Poland was exceptionally intimate. (...) In Poland, (...) national
politics and national literature were smelted in the same fierce fire, and were fused into
an amalgam of such unusual intensity that often one could no longer be recognized from
the other. In a land where all forms of open political activity of a national character were
gradually suppressed, poetry and fiction were mobilized as the most convenient vehicle of
political expression. (...) In Poland, literature did not merely reflect politics as it did
elsewhere; it threatened to replace it. (...) Under such pressures, and hardened by the
horrors of XXth-century occupations, they [the Poles] developed a sense of social
solidarity which the comfortable inhabitants of modern democracies (...) find hard to
comprehend". N. Davies, Heart of Europe - The Past in Poland's Present, Oxford,
University Press, 2001 [reed.], pp. 139, 154, 156 y 161, and cf. p. 148.
.
We have already correctly stated that "là où la mémoire est dynamique, là où elle
sert d'instrument à une transmission psychologique et commune, l'héritage se transforme
en présent"; G. Steiner, Le silence des libres, Paris, Éd. Arléa, 2007, p. 14.
111
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