Awards

• Winner of Outstanding Book Award (United States).
• Winner of Outstanding Book Award 6 (United States)
• Winner of Outstanding Title 6 (United States)

Overview

Young seventeen-year-old Joelito Filartiga was taken from his family home in Asuncion, Paraguay, brutally tortured, and murdered by the Paraguayan police. ""Breaking Silence"" is the inside story of the quest for justice by his father - the true target of the police - Paraguayan artist and philanthropist Dr. Joel Filartiga. That cruel death, and the subsequent uncompromising struggle by Joelito's father and family, led to an unprecedented sea change in international law and human rights. The author, Richard Alan White, first became acquainted with the Filartiga family in the mid-1970s while doing research for his dissertation on Paraguayan independence. Answering a distressed letter from Joelito's father, he returned to Paraguay and journeyed with the Filartiga family on their long and difficult road to redress. White gives the reader a compelling first-hand, participant-observer perspective, taking us into the family with him, to give witness to not only their agony and sorrow, but their resolute strength as well - strength that led to a groundbreaking 10 million legal decision in Filartiga v. Pena. (Americo Norberto Pena-Irala was the Paraguayan police officer responsible for Joelito's abduction and murder, whom the Filartigas had arrested after finding him hiding in Brooklyn). That landmark decision, based on the almost obscure Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, ruled that U.S. courts could accept jurisdiction in international cases - recognizing the right of foreign human rights victims to sue - even though the alleged violation occurred in another country by a non-American and against a non-American. So fundamentally has the Filartiga precedent changed the landscape of international human rights law, that it has served as the basis for nearly 100 progeny suits, and grown to encompass not only human rights abuses, but also violations of international environmental and labor rights law. Today, there are dozens of class action suits pending against corporate defendants ranging from oil conglomerates destroying the Amazon rainforest to designer clothing companies running sweatshops abroad. ""Breaking Silence"" is a remarkable, consuming story, documenting not only the most celebrated case in the international human rights field - but also the tragic and touchingly human story behind it that gives it life. In 2001, Dr. Filartiga was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and the Alien Tort Claims Act continues to be hotly debated among politicians and lawmakers.

Full Product Details

9781589012240

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Reviews

Breaking Silence deserves widespread reading and use. -- Criminal Justice Review

[A] fitting tribute to the courage and commitment of one family, and of a small group of dedicated supporters who stayed the course, and in the end transformed, despite the risks and setbacks involved, the landscape of human rights advocacy. -- George Andreopoulos director of the Center for International Human Rights at the City University of New York, and president of the Human Rights section of the American Political Science Association

Author Information

Richard Alan White is Senior Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, DC, and former consultant on Latin American affairs for ABC World News. He has worked for Amnesty International, and is the author of The Morass: United States Intervention in Central America and Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution: 1810-1840.

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