Guatemala
Republic of Guatemala
Head of state and government: Alfonso Portillo (replaced Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen in January)
Capital: Guatemala City
Population: 11.2 million
Official language: Spanish
Death penalty: retentionist
2000 treaty ratifications/signatures: Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; Optional Protocol to the UN Children's Convention on the involvement of children in armed conflict; Optional Protocol to the UN Women's Convention; Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons
Implementation of the 1996 Peace Accords continued to be
slow. The recommendations of two recent human rights reports were
not acted on and impunity continued to prevail for most human
rights violations perpetrated during the civil conflict. Those
attempting to investigate and bring to justice the perpetrators
continued to face legal obstructions, harassment, intimidation and
an escalating level of attacks, including several apparent
''disappearances'' and extrajudicial executions.
Several demonstrators protesting over social and economic issues
were killed. Lynchings of criminal suspects increased, allegedly
provoked on occasion by local leaders. The death penalty continued
to be imposed: two prisoners were executed by botched lethal
injections.
Background
In January Alfonso Portillo assumed the presidency and promised
that the Peace Accords, which formally ended Guatemala's civil
conflict in 1996, would become state policy. He pledged to
implement the recommendations of the 1998 report of the Guatemalan
church's Recuperation of the Historical Memory (REMHI) project,
and of the UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission (CEH)
which reported in 1999. He stated that shadowy
''parallel'' structures interfering with the
administration of justice would be dismantled and that the murder
of Bishop Juan José Gerardi would be clarified within six
months. Bishop Gerardi, the head of the Archbishop's Human
Rights Office (ODHAG) and leader of the REMHI project, was
murdered in April 1998, just two days after the official
presentation of REMHI's report.
President Portillo failed to fulfil these promises, and observers
noted the increasing power of General Efraín Ríos
Montt, former President, founder of President Portillo's
political party, and now President of Congress. General Ríos
Montt was Head of State and Commander of the Armed Forces during a
period when the army killed tens of thousands of indigenous
peasants, apparently assisted by unofficial security units and by
civil patrols. These patrols had acted as auxiliaries to the
military during the conflict and were officially disbanded after
the Accords, but were allegedly operating again.
The government did not implement the CEH's recommendation to
establish a program to exhume the bodies of those killed in the
conflict. Similarly, little progress was made in establishing a
witness protection program. The government also failed to implement
CEH recommendations to establish special commissions to assess the
conduct of military officials during the conflict, and to establish
the fate of the ''disappeared '', including an
estimated 444 children.
It was announced that the Presidential Chiefs of Staff Unit (EMP),
frequently implicated in abuses including Bishop Gerardi's
murder, was to be disbanded. However, EMP staff were to be
''recycled'' into other government security bodies.
A new unit announced in September, mandated to prevent threats to
internal security and combat crime, was challenged by the
Constitutional Court as it had been created by decree rather than
Congressional vote, and would report to the Minister of the
Interior, rather than to Congress. The government rescinded the
decree and proposed a new unit of special military police to assist
the civil police. A similar unit had been disbanded following the
Peace Accords.
In May, a database of 650,428 names, apparently compiled by
military intelligence during the 1980s, was made public by a
government official. Guatemalan analysts believed the coded number
against each name contained information on their fate.
Allegations of government incompetence and corruption created
repeated rumours of an impending coup and heightened tensions. In
April protests in the capital over proposed public transport price
rises resulted in four deaths, including that of a prominent
journalist. The discovery that General Ríos Montt and
members of his party had altered a liquor tax law after passage by
Congress sparked further demonstrations later in the year. One
demonstrator was killed.
Efforts to combat impunity
Efforts to combat impunity in individual cases or with respect to
specific past massacres made very slow progress through the
courts.
Depositions were finally taken in March 2000 from two former
special forces soldiers (kaibiles) who testified in exchange
for safe passage abroad regarding the 1982 massacre at Dos Erres,
El Petén, when the army killed more than 350 indigenous
villagers. Almost immediately, the government announced
''friendly settlements'' with the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights in several cases, including Dos Erres.
The settlements involved some compensation for the survivors, and
official recognition that government forces had been responsible,
but no prospect of legal proceedings. They were not accepted by all
the families concerned. The military objected to arrest orders
issued against a number of soldiers in connection with the
massacre, arguing that the pre-trial testimony of the former
kaibiles violated the presumption of innocence and due
process. By the end of 2000, the soldiers had not been
arrested.
In a new departure, in May the Centre for Legal Action in Human
Rights (CALDH) assisted survivors from 10 massacres to file
genocide charges before the Guatemalan courts against former Head
of State General Romeo Lucas García (1978-1982) and several
officials from his administration. The CEH had concluded that
genocide had been committed against indigenous peoples in four
specific areas.
A suit filed before the Spanish High Court in December 1999 by the
Rigoberta Menchú Foundation, based on the concept of
universal jurisdiction, charged a number of former officials,
including General Ríos Montt, with human rights crimes
including genocide. The suit was joined by several individual
victims, survivors and non-governmental organizations. In December
the High Court ruled that it did not currently have jurisdiction to
judge the crimes. The plaintiffs immediately appealed against the
decision; judgment on their appeal was pending at the end of the
year.
* In August, two men with petty criminal records charged with the
May 1999 kidnapping and murder of businessman Edgar
Ordóñez Porta were acquitted. The court found that
the Public Ministry had allowed an unofficial
''parallel'' agency to carry out its own
''investigation''. Proceedings were left open
against military officials charged by relatives with carrying out
and covering up the murder.
Bishop Gerardi's murder
Obstructions continued in the case of Bishop Gerardi, who was
murdered in 1998. In May, two members of the ODHAG investigating
team received death threats after the case judge, who has herself
received threats and been followed, ruled that three high-ranking
military officers should stand trial for the murder, along with the
priest who shared Bishop Gerardi's residence, and their
housekeeper. By the end of 2000, no date had been set for the
trial. Earlier, several others involved in the case were forced to
flee the country after threats.
In October, a long-promised report on the case was made public by
President Portillo, but provided no new information.
Attacks on human rights defenders
Human rights defenders and journalists were subjected to an
escalating wave of abuses. Victims included members of the
Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Association, active in exhuming
mass graves; the Students Association of the state University of
San Carlos; members of a shanty-town dwellers' association;
indigenous and women's rights activists; staff and directors of
the news agency CERIGUA which regularly covers human rights
issues; staff of human rights organizations including the Rigoberta
Menchú Foundation; and officials of the Human Rights
Procurator's Office.
- In one typical incident in August, Celso Balán, a CALDH worker, was detained, robbed, drugged and left unconscious in Chimaltenango by two men. They appeared to be paramilitaries acting under the orders of those responsible for the 1982 army massacre in Chipastor, San Martín Jilotepeque, Chimaltenango, currently under investigation by CALDH. Celso Balán required treatment for neurological, physical, psychological and emotional damage.
- In September, heavily armed men raided offices shared by two human rights groups: Families of the Detained and ''Disappeared'' of Guatemala, FAMDEGUA, and HIJOS, children of the ''disappeared'' who want their parents' fate clarified. The armed men forced their victims to the floor, held pistols to their heads, and threatened to kill them. Male victims were forced to strip. Office equipment and case records, including some concerning Dos Erres, were stolen.
'Disappeared' children and illegal adoptions
In August an ODHAG study reported that it had located eight children out of 86 ''disappeared'' children's cases it had investigated. It stated that Guatemala's lucrative trade in illegal adoptions began during the conflict, when military or paramilitary families took in children found wandering after massacres.
People who tried to investigate illegal adoptions faced threats and intimidation. Staff of a human rights and economic migrants organization on the Guatemalan-Mexican border were threatened, apparently because they provided information regarding illegal transfers of children across the border to the UN Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.
- University professor Mayra Angelina Gutiérrez, missing since April, was reportedly targeted because she submitted information about illegal adoptions to the Special Rapporteur. Her name was found on the military database released in May, supporting the hypothesis that her ''disappearance'' was politically motivated.
Women and sexual minorities
In October, Guatemalan women's rights activists reported the failure to implement Peace Accord provisions regarding women to the UN Security Council.
- In June and July, two transvestite sex workers were killed in Guatemala City. Guatemalan gay groups have alleged the existence of an orchestrated program of ''social cleansing'' carried out with police acquiescence, support, and possible direct involvement.
Death penalty
Concern over crime rates contributed to widespread support for the judicial death penalty. By the end of 2000 about 40 people were under sentence of death. In May Congress annulled legislation providing for executive clemency, a right recognized under international law. However, President Portillo considered clemency appeals already filed, and in May granted clemency to a mentally disturbed indigenous man, deemed fit to stand trial after psychological testing carried out in Spanish, which he did not speak, and then convicted at a trial also held in Spanish. In November, the Constitutional Court revoked five death sentences on the grounds that according to the Guatemalan Constitution, international law prevailed over national law in human rights matters.
- Tomás Cerrate Hernández and Luis Amílcar Cetino Pérez were convicted in 1998 of the kidnapping and murder of a wealthy woman. They were executed by lethal injection in June 2000, and the executions were televised. Tomás Cerrate Hernández took seven minutes to die and Luis Amílcar Cetino Pérez eight to nine minutes, after the machine malfunctioned.
- In January, five lawyers who appealed against death sentences passed on alleged kidnappers received death threats, apparently from death penalty supporters. Fearful for their lives, the lawyers resigned.
AI country reports and visits
Reports
- Guatemala: Women's rights defender missing - Mayra Angelina Gutiérrez (AI Index: AMR 34/016/2000)
- Guatemala: Breaking the wall of impunity - Prosecution for crimes against humanity (AI Index: AMR 34/020/2000)
- Guatemala: Further executions loom (AI Index: AMR 34/022/2000)
- Guatemala: HIJOS - Justice for the new generation (AI Index: AMR 34/042/2000)
Visits
An AI research delegation visited Guatemala in April and May and helped make public the CALDH genocide suit. AI's Guatemala Trial Observers Project monitored proceedings related to the killing of Edgar Ordóñez Porta and the1982 massacres at Dos Erres and Tululché, El Quiché.
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