Miles O'Brien and Xeni Jardin report on the role of science and forensics in the Ríos Montt genocide trial in Guatemala.
Here is a very good piece from PBS Newshour - "In Guatemala, investigators using forensic science have compelling evidence that thousands of innocent indigenous Ixil Mayans were the target of extermination in the 1980s. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on how murder, politics and science intersect in the genocide trial of former leader Efrain Rios Montt."
You can read more here.
“Fifty miles southeast of the capital, private security guards working for Vancouver-based mining firm Tahoe Resources shot and wounded several local residents on Saturday in San Rafael Las Flores, on the road in front of Tahoe’s El Escobal silver mine. The mining company’s head of security was arrested while attempting to flee the country. A police officer and a campesino were killed during conflicts earlier this week. Through it all, demonstrations against the mining project have continued amid conflicting reports and government misinformation.”
As Sandra Cuffe notes in her excellent article, the genocide trial of Efraín Ríos Montt has been diverting attention from the escalating conflicts involving rural communities and foreign mining companies.
It seems inevitable that the State favours the latter.
You can read the article here on Upside Down World and view some photoreportage on the State of Siege San Rafael Las Flores from James Rodríguez on MiMundo here.
“In Guatemala, the trial against former General Efraín Ríos Montt, who terrorized the country during his brief dictatorship in the early 1980s, continues. The general has been accused of killing hundreds of indigenous Guatemalans, and he is being tried on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Yet, even as the country seeks justice for some of those murdered during Guatemala’s decades-long genocide against the indigenous Mayans, repression and violence continues — particularly against indigenous communities that are trying to stop resource extraction and environmental degradation.
For years, the Q’anjob’al community has been organizing in Santa Cruz Barillas, a region in western Guatemala, to defend its territory against a hydroelectric dam project. In spite of repression, harassment, detentions and a 17-day stretch of martial law imposed on the neighborhood, the community continues fighting to stop a Spanish transnational company from profiting off the region’s river.
In recent months, the organizers have made significant gains, particularly in the campaign against political repression. On January 9, organizers who had been imprisoned for almost a year were released. Meanwhile, the community is building ties with Guatemala’s other anti-extractive movements, and under the slogan “We Are All Barillas,” the struggle has gained international attention.”
You can read more of this article by Marta Molina in Waging Nonviolence here.
On March 3rd, this year, La Comunidad en Resistencia celebrated its first anniversary of non-violent resistance to the attempt to start mining for gold between the municipalities of San Pedro Ayampuc and San José Del Golfo, on the road between the latter town and the village of El Carrizal. This area is situated some 20-25km from Guatemala City.
This mining project is owned by the U.S. engineering firm of Kappes, Cassiday and Associates (KCA), who purchased it from the Canadian company Radius Gold. This particular project has received sufficient licenses to explore and extract minerals in an area of some 20 square kilometres. It should be noted here that the water requirements alone in this ‘dry corridor’, some 40,000 gallons per day, will affect a far wider area as the water table is exploited, as indeed will the water contamination leaching back into the soil from tailings etc. The extraction licenses were approved by the then Government’s National Director of Mines shortly before the change of Government at the end of 2011. This person is now the General Manager of KCA’s Guatemala subsidiary, EXMINGUA. This is how politics and business function all over.
"More than 100,000 women were raped in the 36 years of the Guatemalan genocide in which at least 200,000 people died.
In this video, photojournalists Ofelia de Pablo and Javier Zurita interview survivors and document the ongoing forensic and legal investigation that has just indicted former Guatemalan President Efraín Ríos Montt."
I just came across this really powerful short film which resonates strongly with the current trial against Ríos Montt.
Xeni Jardin featured it on Boing Boing for the Women Under Siege website.
You can find more here.
A piece in the Guatemala Times by Ingrid Nanne presents an interesting reflection on the trial of Ríos Montt.
The racism that provided the space and motive for the brutality meted out to the indigenous since the Spanish first arrived is alive and well in the country’s media. It will take more than a court case to reverse this.
“What can this trial accomplish? Its main achievement may be to reduce the taboo to discuss this era of Guatemala's history. After years of repressive dictatorships, Guatemalans watch their words because they know the walls have ears and outspokenness has serious consequences. If people begin talking freely then I hope that those who suffered from the war can benefit from articulating the traumas endured. For too long indigenous people's opinions have been undermined and ignored; an attitude that continues during the court case, as can be read in the snide commentary in many local papers when describing the trial's witnesses and victims.”
You can read the full piece here.
“While Guatemala attempts to bring former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt to justice in a landmark genocide trial, deadly violence elsewhere in the country continues unpunished. In less than one month, five activists and human right defenders struggling against mining companies and fighting for land and labor rights have been murdered in rural areas.
Tomas Quej, a young indigenous leader from Baja Verapaz, was found dead with a gunshot wound to the heart on February 26, 2013, as Comunicarte [es] reported. Quej had just won a long struggle in court for the lands of his community. He had seven children, including a newborn.
Right after Quej's murder, indigenous union and campesino leader Carlos Hernández Medoza was murdered on his way back from Honduras on March 8. Hernández was a prominent leader who rallied various sectors in his community and region.”
Renata Avila writes on Global Voices that “the recent repression resembles the death squad operations that once left thousands of leaders killed in Guatemala.” You can read the full article here.
Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, made the following remarks today (March 19th 2013) as the trial of former generals Efrain Rios Montt and Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez began in Guatemala City:
The judges, public prosecutors, and defense attorneys of Guatemala have an enormous responsibility to guarantee a fair trial: fair for the victims and fair for the accused. A fair trial is a necessary condition of, but not alone sufficient for a successful experience: the impact of the trial on Guatemala and on the world will depend on the actions of others. Journalists, politicians, movie directors, writers, and concerned citizens are the ones who can make this trial a turning point in history.
The trial can help us understand the impact of the Cold War, a difficult period in Latin American history, when the massacre of civilians became a political tool for obtaining or maintaining power. Trained guerrilla fighters hid among the civilian populations while military and political forces developed plans for control that included the torture and murder of Guatemalan citizens.
In 1985 I had the privilege of serving as an assistant prosecutor in the trial of the military juntas that had governed Argentina. We had proof that intelligence officials from our army, educated by French and American officials, had trained Guatemalan officials in the use of torture and extrajudicial executions. Both in Argentina and in Guatemala, these murders were not isolated or spontaneous actions by members of security and armed forces. These crimes were the result of carrying out plans and orders. For this reason it is so important that the trial concentrates on those who gave the orders. In an army, the commander is responsible for the actions of his troops. If the commanding officers order and cover up the crimes, then they are responsible. This is the kind of conduct that must be avoided in future.
"In an important precedent-setting development for the accountability of Canadian mining companies for alleged overseas human rights abuses, victims of rape and murder at a Guatemalan mine are now able to sue a Canadian mining company in Canadian courts.
Guatemalan Mayan villagers who are suing Canadian mining company HudBay Minerals for the alleged gang-rapes of eleven women, the killing of community leader Adolfo Ich and the shooting and paralyzing of German Chub at HudBay's former mining project in Guatemala recently learned that HudBay has abruptly abandoned its legal argument that the lawsuit should not be heard in Canada, just before an Ontario court was set to determine the issue. As a result, and for the first time, a lawsuit against a Canadian mining company over alleged human rights abuses abroad will be heard in Canadian courts."
More here from Rights Action on this important development.
As mentioned here previously, community members of San José del Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc, 45 minutes outside of Guatemala City, have been legally and peacefully engaging in an encampment and, for nearly a year now, have maintained a human roadblock to the mine, preventing machinery and mining employees from entering the site. They fear the mine will endanger their well being and contaminate their already scarce water supply. All this at great personal cost.
In the first week of December, hundreds of police and anti-riot troops, along with mining company personnel, arrived to evict the community members. At least three community members needed medical attention due to breathing in the tear-gas after the aggression by the armed forces. During the attack, the community members held their ground, peacefully, and sang songs. For the time being, the police and other armed forces have again backed down. The encampment continues legally and peacefully.
The fear that the community have was confirmed by US engineer and mining expert Rob Robinson, who analyzed the 900-page Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the El Tambor gold mine and travelled to Guatemala to present his findings to the Guatemalan government, the press, and affected communities.
“The analysis is so bad that it can’t help us predict or prevent the negative effects of the mine,” explained Mr. Robinson. “It gives no confidence that the mining company will protect the environment or the health of the communities.”
Grahame Russell writes here in rabble.ca about the police attack and the article also contains good background material as well as a video and the text of a letter from the new owners of the mine, KCA. More on the environmental impact report can be found here on the Mining Justice Alliance website (from GHRC).
Paul N. Avakian writes in the Foreign Policy Journal, “against a long history of impunity, a Guatemalan high judge last month sent to trial a lingering genocide case against a popular former dictator who presided over the most brutal phase of repression during the country’s 36-year civil war.”
The article goes on to state that, “Ríos Montt’s defense for what he has called “excesses” committed during his reign has always been that he was an uninformed and uninvolved leader trying to bring peace to a country under siege, that soldiers had acted on their own in the atrocities. “His intention was only to restore order and cooperation among the Mayan-Ixil,” Ríos Montt’s lawyer has said of his client. “He did not determine the level of force that the Army used.”
But a packet of documents that surfaced in 2009, entitled “Operación Sofia”, that details the Army’s 1982 Ixil operations, says otherwise, according to experts. The packet consists of 359 pages of plans, orders, maps, telegrams and hand-written reports. “These records show chain of command communications up and down the line, and coincide with witness testimony,” said Kate Doyle, the forensic archivist who was given the documents by Guatemalan sources. “They provide firsthand evidence of Ríos Montt’s deliberate policy of repression and terror against the Ixil Mayans. But it should be emphasized that they became available to prosecutors not from the Guatemalan government but through leaks and accidental discoveries.””
You can read the full article here.
The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict. It recently published a report into the killings at Totonicapán featured here previously. The report, ‘Totonicapán: Tension in Guatemala’s Indigenous Hinterland’, includes the following recommendations:
President Pérez Molina should commit his government to a timetable and benchmarks for police reform – including the training and equipping of units specialised in crowd control – so that the military can be withdrawn from crime fighting and other public security functions
Security forces should work closely with protest organisers (and vice versa) to guarantee that demonstrations can proceed peacefully with as little harm to economic activity and commuters as possible.
Congress should create legal means of addressing the legitimate concerns of communities about environmental degradation and the social and economic impact of hydroelectric and mining projects; and seek input from local indigenous leaders on legislation to establish the “good faith” consultations required under International Labour Organization Convention no. 169.
The National System of Permanent Dialogue (SNDP) should promote a comprehensive review of extractive best practices, in close consultation with investors, environmental groups and indigenous organisations, in order to devise joint strategies aimed at protecting local interests.
Investors should perform environmental and human rights due diligence that takes carefully into account the special needs and challenges faced by indigenous communities; and also conduct base line studies and ongoing assessments through credible mechanisms in collaboration with the community.
You can read more here.
“Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez ended a four-hour hearing today in the genocide trial of former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt by accepting all of the witnesses, experts and documents submitted as evidence by the prosecution. The defense, by contrast, failed in its bid to incorporate experts and documentary evidence on behalf of their client, although the judge approved several defense witnesses.”
More on the genocide case against Ríos Montt from Kate Doyle can be found here.
Meanwhile, the latest is that the case is to move into the debate phase, set for August 14th, 2013.
The news that Efraín Ríos Montt was to stand trial on charges of genocide was widely greeted.
Kirsten Weld, in the New York Times, in recognising the bravery of the Guatemalan judge stated, “In greenlighting a public trial for the former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt on charges of genocide, the judge, Miguel Ángel Gálvez, made his country the first in the Americas to prosecute a former head of state, in its own domestic courts, for the ultimate crime”.
This was the latest stage in this particular, and extraordinary, judicial process. Amy Ross, in Al Jazeera, noted, “His arrest in January 2012 - the judge ordered the former army general confined to his home - represented an extraordinary break with impunity in the Central American country; the decision to proceed with the trial, despite attempts to have the charges dropped, is of even greater significance. No ranking officer has been held responsible for the violence in which some 200,000 people, almost all civilians, lost their lives”.
Mike Allison, also in Al Jazeera, stated that the case may also cast a light on President Otto Pérez Molina’s role in the massacres that took place in the Ixil region during Ríos Montt’s de facto presidency.
You can read Kirsten’s piece here, Amy’s here, and Mike’s piece here.
Great news in from Guatemala today – this from Associated Press.
“A former U.S.-backed dictator who presided over one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala's civil war will stand trial on charges he ordered the murder, torture and displacement of thousands of Mayan Indians, a judge ruled Monday.
Human rights advocates have said that the prosecution of Jose Efrain Rios Montt would be an important symbolic victory for the victims of one of the most horrific of the conflicts that devastated Central America during the last decades of the Cold War.
He is the first former president to be charged with genocide by a Latin American court.”
You can read the full article here and you can read this, in Spanish, from Prensa Libre.
On March 3rd, this year, La Comunidad en Resistencia celebrated its first anniversary of non-violent resistance to the attempt to start mining for gold between the municipalities of San Pedro Ayampuc and San José Del Golfo, on the road between the latter town and the village of El Carrizal. This area is situated some 20-25km from Guatemala City.
This mining project is owned by the U.S. engineering firm of Kappes, Cassiday and Associates (KCA), who purchased it from the Canadian company Radius Gold. This particular project has received sufficient licenses to explore and extract minerals in an area of some 20 square kilometres. It should be noted here that the water requirements alone in this ‘dry corridor’, some 40,000 gallons per day, will affect a far wider area as the water table is exploited, as indeed will the water contamination leaching back into the soil from tailings etc. The extraction licenses were approved by the then Government’s National Director of Mines shortly before the change of Government at the end of 2011. This person is now the General Manager of KCA’s Guatemala subsidiary, EXMINGUA. This is how politics and business function all over.
