justice

Certainly one with promise for human rights and the struggle against impunity.

The Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC) has highlighted two major events – the stand out news that former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt has been charged with genocide and crimes against humanity.

Following the recent elections, Ríos Montt had lost his seat in Congress and so his immunity to face charges. Now, on January 26th, “the Public Prosecutor read the evidence against him…and read…and read…until he had summarized the crimes committed by armed forces under Rios Montt’s command in 1982-83 which constituted acts of genocide in Guatemala’s Ixil Triangle (San Juan Cotzal, San Gaspar Chajúl and Santa María Nebaj): the forced displacement of 29,000, the deaths of 1,771 individuals in 11 massacres, as well as torture and 1,485 acts of sexual violence against women.”

Many people did not think that this would be possible but it is only a step, although important, in holding the former President to account. He has yet to use the General Pinochet/Jack Straw defence – being unfit to stand trial, unlike former General Mejia Victores, Ríos Montt’s successor.

Although the sight of the former dictator being charged is a great event, we have to wait and see the outcome.

The other event of significance, taking place on the same day, was the Guatemala Congress’s ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. This Statute allows for the ICC to prosecute any human rights abusers if Guatemala fails to do so.

The story of Jesus Tecu Osorio and the massacres of the Chixoy Dam project have been followed and told here on GSN previously.

Al Jazeera carries an opinion piece by Lauren Carasik and Grahame Russell on the continuing wait for justice for the victims of the Chixoy Dam massacres in March 1982.

“Among the 32 communities along the river slated for forced resettlement, the village of Rio Negro opposed the plan most vigorously, a principled resistance for which they paid an unconscionable price. Impatient with unsuccessful efforts to threaten and intimidate the villagers into involuntary departure, the regime settled on a brutally effective relocation strategy - emptying the community through the systematic massacre of its inhabitants.”

The Dam was primarily funded by the World Bank.

“Despite the history of human rights abuses and poorly administered forcible displacements associated with its various hydroelectric projects, the World Bank has argued that its Articles of Agreement, which predated various human rights instruments, does not require consideration of human rights in its funding decisions.”

You can read this strong piece here.

Two recent items from NISGUA (Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala) highlight the genocide cases and also the recent attacks against the Attorney General – the latter being part of a campaign against human rights defenders in general through the judicial system.

Regarding the genocide cases, ‘Lawyers representing the retired Generals Héctor Mario López Fuentes and Oscar Humberto Mejía Víctores have adopted strategies which could delay or prevent further advances in the cases.’

As regards the attacks on the Attorney General, ‘Ricardo Méndez Ruiz, whose father was minister of the interior under Efrain Rios Montt, has made no attempt to mask the politicized nature of his legal complaint: "Of course it's politically motivated. It's against the Attorney General, for the love of god, I'm aiming at her"’.

“Guatemala is a land of tremendous contrasts; a place of incredible beauty, wonderful people and heart-stopping terror. Our final evening on a recent Skylight Pictures visit to this “land of eternal spring” starts simply enough, but by the end of it we experience a little of Guatemala’s extremes.”

So begins a recent blog article by Peter Kinoy on IJCentral. Peter was involved in the making of the film Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, which we have featured here before.

“As we packed our bags for an early morning flight I thought about these wonderful people, full of life and courage and how they remain optimistic about a possible Guatemala where the beauty and culture would shine and flourish, and I wondered if there would ever be a time when the hideously unchecked terror and violence would become only a memory.”

More than 28 years have passed since the massacre of more than 200 men, women, and children in the small farming community of Las Dos Erres, Petén. For 17 years, survivors and family members of victims have struggled to bring the perpetrators to justice, with the support of the Guatemalan Association of Families of the Detained and Disappeared (FAMDEGUA).

On July 25, the criminal trial against four former members of the Guatemalan military opened.  On August 3, Manuel Pop Sun, Reyes Collin Gualip, Daniel Martínez Mendez and Carlos Antonio Carías López were convicted for their participation in the massacre.  Each of the accused was sentenced to 6,060 years, with Carías López receiving extra time for having appropriated property of the massacre victims.

Of the accused, three served as instructors at the training academy for the infamous "Kaibil" special counterinsurgency forces of the Guatemalan military, while Carías López was the commanding officer of the nearby military base in Las Cruces, Petén. This is the first case in which Kaibiles have been sentenced for crimes committed during the war.

Two other former Kaibiles accused in the case await trial.  Pedro Pimentel Ríos was recently deported from the United States. According to witnesses, he left Guatemala via helicopter shortly after the massacre in order to attend the U.S. military-sponsored School of the Americas in Panamá. Jorge Sosa Orantes, is detained in Canada pending an extradition hearing in August to determine whether he will be tried in the U.S. for immigration fraud, or in Guatemala, Spain, or Canada for crimes against humanity.

This was from NISGUA and more from the Guardian.

At the 2000 UN Millennium Summit, world leaders from rich and poor countries alike committed themselves - at the highest political level - to a set of eight time-bound targets (Millennium Development Goals – MDGs) that, when achieved, will end extreme poverty worldwide by 2015. MDG 1 aims to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. RTVE, the Spanish national broadcaster, broadcast a series of films promoting the MDGs and the film on MDG 1 highlighted the Mendoza family from Guatemala – Juan, Irma and their ten children survive, if that’s the word, on less than a euro a day. The family are Maya Ch’ortí’ and live in the east of Guatemala, near Jocotán, in Chiquimula.

In Guatemala, according to the film, extreme poverty has an indigenous face. Watching this film leaves you in no doubt that it is extremely hard work being poor.

“Members of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG) have now been working for seven months on the landmark exhumations at La Verbena Cemetery. Without a doubt, this is the most complex and ambitious project in search of the 45,000 detained-disappeared, victims of Guatemala’s State-induced terrorism against its citizens primarily during the 1970s and 80s.”

The latest from James Rodriguez – mimundo.org – is self-explanatory but do spare a thought for those who attended the inauguration of the exhumations, many of whom called out the names of those family members who had disappeared and were met with the collective ‘presente’ – present – a powerful reclamation in Latin America.

Also available here is a radio interview, in Spanish, with James on 95.1 FM Estereo Plata, from Zacatecas, Mexico.

We were recently notified of this Kate Doyle article on the National Security Archive site.

History was made yesterday (September 17, 2010) when a U.S. District Court Judge in Southern Florida, William J. Zloch, sentenced former Guatemalan special forces soldier Gilberto Jordán to ten years in federal prison. Jordán was convicted of lying on his citizenship application to hide his role in the 1982 massacre of hundreds of unarmed civilians in Dos Erres, Guatemala. In condemning Jordán to the maximum time allowed by law for naturalization fraud, Judge Zloch made clear that he intended the ruling to send a clear message that “those who commit egregious human rights violations abroad” cannot find “safe haven from prosecution” in the United States. The sentence marks the first time that any of the dozens of Kaibil special forces who carried out the murders almost 28 years ago has been prosecuted.

"After three years of bureaucratic suspension and six months of hearings, five ex-civil patrollers were sentenced to 780 years in prison by the Sentencing Tribunal in the highland county of Salamá on May 28."

"The massacre of Río Negro women and children is one of 626 documented massacres perpetrated during the bloodiest of Latin America’s civil wars in which 250,000 people were killed or disappeared. Guatemala’s 36 year-long internal armed conflict developed within the international context of the cold war, lasting from 1960 to 1996. As part of Guatemala’s Peace Accords, the UN sponsored a truth commission report called the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) which found the Guatemalan army and paramilitary forces responsible for 93% of the atrocities."

This from Upside Down World, written by Kimberly Kohler and Josh MacLeod.