EXECUTIONS

55The current public security apparatus is a vestige of the militaryregime, which, for twenty-one years, focused on defending law and orderand combating the enemy through persecution of an ideological andpolitical nature. Today it is necessary to definitively break with thisauthoritarian legacy and incorporate democratic logic and values intopublic policy in this area. According to the democratic logic of the 1988Constitution, public security is a responsibility of the State and must beconsistent with the fundamental rights of citizens. In order for the policeto provide the relevant public services that citizens merit, they must make aclean break from their legacy of repression and eliminate all remainingtraces of authoritarianism. Practices such as police efficiency in combatand impunity must be reconciled with absolute respect for human dignityand fundamental rights.The State is obliged not only to respect fundamental rights, butalso to ensure the full and free exercise of these rights. Consequently, theState has both positive and negative obligations. On one hand, the State isobligated not to violate rights (i.e., not to kill, torture, deprive one of a fairtrial, etc.), and on the other hand, it is duty bound to adopt the measuresnecessary to ensure guaranteed rights (i.e., to prevent forceddisappearances, prohibit the actions of death squads, etc.). Even if stateagents are not directly responsible for abusive actions themselves, the Stateis still responsible for adopting effective measures to protect against such53violations.As the cases in this report demonstrate, the State routinely fails tocomply with its duty to investigate, try and punish those responsible forextrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions committed directly by stateagents or death squads. The culture of impunity perpetuates the practiceof these violations through a vicious circle in which killers summarilyexecute suspects presuming their crimes will go unpunished. When, infact, their crimes are not investigated or prosecuted successfully, this53. As author Thomas Buergenthal points out, "The State Parties to the Convention have anobligation not only 'to respect' the rights guaranteed in the Convention, but also 'to ensure' their freeand full exercise. (Art.1(1).) They consequently have both positive and negative duties, that is, theyhave the obligation not to violate the rights which the Convention guarantees and are required toadopt whatever measures may be necessary and reasonable under the circumstances 'to ensure' theirfull enjoyment,'" (Thomas Buergenthal, International Human Rights in a Nutshell, (St. Paul: WestPublishing Company, 1998)).