On the 24^th of April 2009, Valencian judge José Maria Tomas i Tio presented the findings and decisions of the Tribunal for the Restoration of Justice in El Salvador, of which he was a member.

Simultaneously the other judges on the tribunal made a similar presentation in Sao Paolo and San Salvador.

The International Tribunal for the Restoration of Justice in El Salvador condemned the government of that country for human rights violations, including torture and summary executions.

At the behest of the Central American University (UCA) the tribunal called for further investigations and financial compensations for victims.

The tribunal’s president was the Valencian judge and President of the NGO the 'Justice Foundation', José María Tomás y Tío

Not many men have had the opportunity to handcuff a President and resisted the temptation; but that was the case for Judge José Maria Tomás i Tío when he interviewed Spain’s first post-dictatorship President, Adolfo Suarez on his yacht off Ibiza and found that he didn’t have his identity card on him. The President was let off with a warning and the incident, in which he’d been insulted by a disgruntled army officer, never amounted to anything.

Someone who has been a judge in Spain since 1976 inevitably has many anecdotes to tell; embargoing the bank accounts of the government of Equatorial Guinea is another amusing example; but what really interests José Maria is the idea of justice for all, and not just for those of us fortunate enough to live in the developed world. That is why, in 1994, Jose Maria founded the Justice Foundation (Fundación por la Justicia) and is why he spends a lot of his time in countries such as Ethiopia and Bangladesh, trying to make a difference.

It was during his time as spokesman for Valencia’s judges as their elected Dean that it occurred to him that those who worked in the justice system needed to find ways to bridge the gap between the justice administration and society at large. He therefore set up a working group to see how that could come about, and the Justice Foundation came into being. It wasn’t long before the participants realised that the emerging world was crying out for the kind of initiatives that they could offer and so the idea grew to give an international orientation to the Foundation.

Since then they have created projects in many countries, including Bangladesh, Peru, Kenya, El Salvador, Paraguay and Ethiopia to promote human rights in direct and practical ways.

In Bangladesh for example they work with Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunnus, providing the micro credits, for which he is famous, to enable rickshaw drivers to buy their own vehicles and become independent. Last year 177 Bangladesh citizens achieved this goal thanks to the Foundation. In Spain they use the same formula of micro credits to integrate released prisoners and drug addicts.

They also use the cinema to promote human rights and help young people reflect upon problems such as drug abuse, human rights and the situation of women.

During the America’s Cup, while others played at sailors, they attempted to make people remember that water is not just a pleasant leisure zone but a precious matter of life and death in some places on the planet, and so they used the event to raise awareness and money for 5 water-related projects soon to be launched in Kenya, Mozambique, Guinea, Benin and Ethiopia.

Jose Maria will be in Ethiopia, probably in April, in order to see put into practice a project of co-operation with Bogaletch Gebre, the extraordinary human rights activist and President of the Kembatta Women’s Self Help Centre, who campaigns against the ablation that she herself suffered as a child.

With the same energy and inner strength that helped her as a child to achieve an education, against her father’s will and behind his back, taking advantage with her mother’s help of the four hours a day that she had to walk as a child to bring home water, her organisation and the Foundation will train judges, lawyers, policemen and university students to help eradicate the genital mutilation that is perpetrated upon three million African children every year.

Another of José Maria’s great passions is football and Valencia Football Club. Here too his interest in cooperation with emerging countries rises to the forefront, and he and a group of like-minded friends have created the ‘Penya Valencianista Per La Solidaritat’, a supporters club for Valencia FC that promotes projects to help those who want to play football in places with limited facilities through the purchase of kits, by building sports centres and pitches, or providing floodlighting.

The idea came about in Ethiopia, where in 2002 he was unable to see the Valencia match in Malaga that would make them league winners. Nowhere in the capital were they able to find out the result and so they had to set off on a 300 kilometre ride through the savannah to meet with a local doctor, who was 28 but looked 60, and was having to run a broken down clinic providing the only medical attention in the area for 200,000 people.

Much to their surprise, the doctor immediately asked them if they knew the result of the game, and was able to bring them a little happiness with the news that Valencia were indeed champions. It was this that made them realise how important football could be worldwide and, determined to take advantage of football’s power, they set the ball rolling.

On one of his journeys José Maria told me about a hair raising car ride along dangerous roads in the mountains of northern Peru, a ride that took eight hours to cover 60 kilometres, at the end of which they were able to turn on the lighting of an isolated village through hydroelectric power obtained from a local waterfall. It is one of his greatest satisfactions that, thanks to the village now being connected to the Internet, he is able to receive the scores of the local games each week, sent by a grateful village, which ironically is called ‘Naranjo’ (orange tree).

Gratitude is important to Jose Maria, and he is especially grateful to the education that he received at a Jesuit school in Valencia that enabled him to develop his own criteria and enable him to make his own objective judgements.

One priest who has received the benefit of some of that gratitude is Teulada-born missionary Vicente Belenguer, whose work in Ressano García near the South African border in Mozambique has largely been made possible by Valencian solidarity during his 40 years of service there.

José Maria loves to talk about his projects, but with admirable modesty is loathe to talk about himself, preferring to pass on the impressions made on him by all that he has seen, such as his description of his impressions of Bangladesh, a country he summarised as being one of “misery and smiles”.