2 population (essentially, youngsters). However, this does not exonerate the State of its responsibility for the sustained pattern of chronicle violence victimizing a segment of its population (youngsters), - pattern proven in the unsatisfactory dossier of the present case. Truly, this pattern has unfortunately continued for a prolonged period of time, that includes the year of occurrence of the facts of the present case (1995) and continues up to this date (that is, more than a decade). 5. There is one detail that I would not like to leave unmentioned, since in my opinion it is very symbolic. As stated by the Court in its recount of the facts proven in the cas d'espèce, "the 15th day of September of 1995 the Public Security Force (FUSEP) made collective arrests, that included the capture of 128 people, within the framework of a preventive and indiscriminate police operative (…) in the city of Tegucigalpa, in order to avoid disturbances during the parades held to celebrate Honduras’ National Independence Day." (para. 79(5)). Among those arrested were Marco Antonio Servellón García (16 years old), Rony Alexis Betancourth Hernández (17 years old), Diomedes Obed García (19 years old), and Orlando Álvarez Ríos (32 years old), the victims of the present case (that is, two children, one youngster, and one adult), - that were shortly afterwards found murdered, with gun wounds to their nape, head, and chest, in different parts of the city of Tegucigalpa, reason for which the episode was called, and was known as, the case of the “four cardinal points" (para. 79(32)). 6. That is, maintaining the order for the celebrations of the national holiday was an excuse for the perpetration of this violent and criminal operation. The symbolism that characterizes the episode resides, as seen by me, in the counter position between the State and the nation. The State, historically and originally conceived and created for the realization of common good, goes on to victimize – in a scary reversion of values – “undesirable” segments alienated from their own population. As I pointed out in my recent and extensive General Course on Public International Law at the Academy of International Law of La Haya (2005), 1 of the classic constitutive elements of the State, - and prerequisites of its international judicial personality,that make up its own identity and continuity in time (that is, territory, normative system, and population), it is precisely the most precise of them, population, the one that has been most neglected and mistreated both in doctrine and in practice! 7. This reveals characteristics of a real tragedy, the great tragedy of our times, aggravated by the fact that today those that read and think, and seem willing to learn from the lessons of the past are constantly reduced. In the extremely violent world in which we live in today, we must, to the contrary, seek protection from the State, - against the myth of the State 2, - against its actions and omissions, and before its express incapacity – in almost all parts of the contemporary world – to offer a minimum protection to its population, and especially to its most vulnerable segments. 8. That decided in the present Judgment of the Court in the case of Servellón García et al. is based on the State’s objective international responsibility. The classical case in this sense, in the jurisprudence of this Court, is that of “The Last 1 . A.A. Cançado Trindade, "International Law for Humankind: Towards a New Jus Gentium - General Course on Public International Law", Recueil des Cours de l'Académie de Droit International de la Haye (2005) ch. XXI (in press). . 2 To evoke the expression used in a classic study of Ernst Cassirer.