By Fabiana Frayssinet
GUATEMALA CITY, Oct 6 1995 (IPS)

The army and spokespersons for repatriated refugees in Guatemala gave contradictory versions on Friday with respect to a massacre in which at least 10 rural inhabitants who returned a year ago from exile in Mexico were killed.

According to the Permanent Commissions of Refugees (CCPP), the attack, carried out by unknown gunmen, occurred on Thursday afternoon on a rural estate in the department of Alta Verapaz, 140 kilometres from Guatemala City.

CCPP spokespersons said unidentified gunmen attacked an assembly of repatriated refugees in the ‘Aurora 8 de octubre’ village, in which nearly half of the community’s 441 inhabitants were planning celebrations for the first anniversary of their return from Mexico.

The CCPP’s Ricardo Curtz said the gunmen also injured more than 12 people, with gunfire and grenades.

A delegation from the United Nations Mission for the Verification of Human Rights in Guatemala (MINUGUA) and the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugess (UNHCR) sent to the site on Thursday to investigate the incident said it is still “contradictory and confusing.”

The army description of the attack differs widely with other versions. According to Defence Minister Mario Enriquez, a patrol of 25 soldiers, headed by Second Lieutenant Lacan Chaclan, set out on Oct. 3 to patrol several rural communities in the area.

The minister claimed that when the patrol was passing near ‘Aurora 8 de octubre’ – some 100 metres away – the soldiers were approached by a group of eight repatriates, with whom they held a “friendly chat for nearly 35 minutes.

“It was such a friendly chat that the villagers even told the soldiers the anniversary of their return was coming up, and invited them to participate in a soccer game in the community to celebrate.”

Six women then showed up and insisted that the patrol visit their community, he claimed.

“The soldiers said they were not allowed to go near areas inhabited by returned refugees, and that they would go on their way. But the people insisted that they visit, because otherwise it would be interpreted as a snub.”

According to Enriquez, when they reached the village, the members of the patrol were surrounded first by women and children, and later by the men, who snatched three rifles from the soldiers and began to shoot at them.

“When they saw that, the soldiers first began to fire shots into the air to scare them off, and then to defend themselves,” the minister added, pointing out that three soldiers were wounded – one seriously – and that six are missing.

Upon its visit to the site, the delegation of representatives from MINUGUA – set up in the country as part of accords reached by the government and rebel forces – and the UNHCR helped transfer a number of wounded people to a hospital in Guatemala City in three helicopters.

President Ramiro De Leon Carpio announced that a special commission to investigate the incident will be created.

The massacre occurred the day before the arrival of U.N. human rights adviser Monica Pinto, who is to evaluate the current situation in the country.

Defence Minister Enriquez had previously warned that Pinto’s arrival could trigger violence.

The massacre has been condemned by a number of public figures, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu.

Menchu, who was attending a conference in the University of Wisconsin in the United States, blamed the army for the attack, in statements to the Guatemalan ‘Radio Sonora’.

The Guatemalan indigenous leader said such incidents hamper the peace talks between the government and guerrilla forces, who are seeking a negotiated solution to the armed conflict that has gripped her country since more than three decades ago.

Some 45,000 rural inhabitants took refuge in southern Mexico to flee the violence, above all during the early 1980s, when security forces carried out a particularly intense offensive, in which the inhabitants of innumerable rural villages lost their lives.

In Mexico, the refugees lived in camps, assisted by the government of that country and ACNUR.

When a democratic form of government was reestablished in Guatemala in 1986, the refugees bagan to be repatriated. Some 27,000 have returned to their country so far.

One of the accords signed by the government and the rebels, in which the De Leon administration guaranteed full respect for the human rights of the repatriates, involves the resettlement of the refugees.

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