Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

RIGHTS: Guatemala Turns Deaf Ear to Inter-American Justice

Inés Benítez

GUATEMALA CITY, Apr 11 2008 (IPS) - Organisations that represent survivors and relatives of victims of Guatemala’s 1960-1996 civil war complained that the attorney general’s office has failed to fully comply with three resolutions handed down by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

“The Guatemalan state has a debt to the victims of the armed conflict. We are here to denounce the lack of investigations and failure to punish those responsible for grave human rights violations,” Marcela Martino, of the Centre for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), said in a press conference Thursday.

In the cases known as “Villagrán Morales et al”, “Bámaca Velásquez” and “Plan de Sánchez Massacre v. Guatemala”, the Inter-American Court handed down resolutions in 2001, 2002 and 2004 calling on the state to identify, prosecute and punish the perpetrators and masterminds of these incidents. But that has not occurred, said the activist.

A 1996 peace agreement put an end to the bloody 36-year armed conflict between the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) guerrillas and government forces and their paramilitary allies, in which some 200,000 mainly rural indigenous people were killed. An independent truth commission found the army responsible for more than 90 percent of the killings.

Mario Minera, director of the Centre for Legal Action on Human Rights (CALDH), described the July 1982 massacre of 268 people in the village of Plan de Sánchez in the northern province of Alta Verapaz as “an extremely grave violation of the right to life perpetrated by the state security forces.”

Minera criticised “the lack of will on the part of the attorney general’s office to investigate and prosecute,” which he said contributed to the climate of impunity in Guatemala.

He pointed out that the complaint on the Plan de Sánchez case was presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) over a decade ago, in 1996.

“No in-depth investigation has been carried out in the case of the Plan de Sánchez massacre, which (former dictator) Efraín Ríos Montt was ultimately responsible for,” said Juan Francisco Soto, coordinator of CALDH’s Justice and Reconciliation Programme.

In July 2006, a high court in Spain, the Audiencia Nacional, issued an international arrest warrant to seek the extradition to Spain of Ríos Montt and seven former military and civilian officials from his de facto administration, on charges of torture, state terrorism and genocide brought by indigenous activist and 1992 Nobel Peace Prize-winner Rigoberta Menchú.

According to the Spanish high court, agents of the state committed 93 percent of the killings during the civil war, when 667 massacres were carried out and 430 villages were wiped off the map.

The court documents also stated that 83 percent of those killed (after being tortured, in many cases) were Maya Indians and the other 17 percent were mestizos (of mixed indigenous and European descent).

Close to 1.5 million people were forced to flee their homes, over 45,000 people remain missing, and 150,000 people sought refuge in Mexico.

Ríos Montt was dictator in 1982 and 1983, which was the height of the counterinsurgency “scorched earth” campaign in which hundreds of rural indigenous villages were destroyed, along with every single inhabitant.

The Inter-American Court, which had issued a judgment on the Plan de Sánchez massacre in April 2004, handed down a resolution for “monitoring compliance with judgment” on Nov. 28, 2007, ordering the Guatemalan state to “identify, prosecute and punish the perpetrators and masterminds”.

Martino said that four months into the term of social democratic President Álvaro Colom, who took office on Jan. 14, “there is an urgent need to take timely measures so that the attorney general’s office can fulfil its obligation to investigate.”

The activist was also referring to the lack of an in-depth probe into the Mar. 12, 1992 forced disappearance of URNG commander Efraín Bámaca Velásquez at the hands of the security forces, and to the case of “Villagrán Morales et al”, involving the Jun. 15, 1990 abduction, torture and murder of four street youths, and the killing of a friend of theirs 10 days later by three police officers in the presence of witnesses.

Although criminal charges were brought against the policemen implicated in the killings, they were acquitted. However, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights handed down a landmark decision in 1999, finding the Guatemalan state guilty of violating the American Convention on Human Rights.

“All these years after the incidents occurred and after the Inter-American Court resolutions were handed down, the state has still not advanced in the investigations,” complained Martino.

In a May 26, 2001 decision, the Inter-American Court ordered the Guatemalan state to “investigate the facts of the case and identify and sanction those responsible,” and to “change its domestic legislation in accordance with Article 19 of the American Convention.” It also awarded 500,000 dollars in damages against Guatemala in favour of the families of the five murdered street youths, four of whom were minors.

But nearly seven years later, no effective investigation has been carried out, said Martino.

“We have become spokespersons for the families and the victims, who are clamouring for the attorney-general’s office to prosecute the people who carried out the massacre,” said Minera.

A joint communiqué issued by CEJIL and CALDH states that impunity continues to surround the cases against a backdrop of “tolerance and indulgence by the state, which demonstrates a lack of capacity, and, even worse, that it is possible to cover up those who are responsible for these incidents.”

In addition, Martino said the attorney general’s office does not provide “precise and clear” information to the IACHR and the Inter-American Court, but simply repeats what it submitted years ago, since no further legal action has been taken.

She also expressed concern that survivors and victims’ families do not have adequate access to the information contained in the case records.

The CEJIL activist told IPS that those affected by the armed conflict are not only seeking reparations, but also “prosecution of the perpetrators.”

A National Reparations Programme (PNR) was created in April 2003 and furnished with an annual budget of around 40 million dollars. It was conceived of as a set of policies, projects and actions to indemnify, vindicate and improve the situation of survivors of the armed conflict, as recommended by the truth commission, formally known as the “commission for historical clarification”.

Because there is no national registry of victims, no exact figure exists of the number of people affected by the civil war, which means it is unclear how much money would be needed to pay reparations to all of the survivors.

On Feb. 25, the National Day of Dignity for Victims of the War, President Colom said that “Today I want to make a commitment to Guatemala, but especially to the victims” of the armed conflict.

“Now you have a government led by a president who is not going to hide anything,” he said, announcing that he was opening up the army’s archives, which contain documents that can shed light on the human rights crimes committed during the armed conflict.

He acknowledged that the state committed atrocities during the civil war, and said the best thing would be to transfer the military’s archives to the office of the Human Rights Ombudsman.