Scores of people were killed in circumstances suggesting they may have been extrajudicially executed, although identification of the perpetrators was often virtually impossible. One prisoner of conscience was held. One prisoner was executed; 37 others were under sentence of death. Threats and harassment continued at a high level. There was little progress in bringing to justice those responsible for past human rights violations. Human rights abuses by the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca(urng), Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, a political party and former armed opposition group, during the civil conflict remained unclarified.

Implementation of the wide-ranging agreements included in the December 1996 Final Peace Accord, which formally ended Guatemala's long-term civil conflict (see Amnesty International Reports 1997 and1998) proceeded slowly. Local human rights monitors expressed disappointment at what they saw as a diminished emphasis on human rights monitoring by the un Verification Mission for Guatemala (minugua), while government officials criticized minugua for interference in matters outside its mandate. In September the un extended minugua's mandate to the end of the year 2000.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (iachr) made its first post-Peace Accord visit to the country in August.
The Historical Clarification Commission (ceh), established under the Peace Accord to clarify ''human rights violations and acts of violence… linked to the period of armed conflict'', extended its deliberations and was expected to report in January 1999.
In its report following its meeting in May the un Committee against Torture expressed particular concern at the repeated instances of threats and intimidation directed at those involved in the judicial process and found that persistent inadequacies in the judiciary, the Public Ministry and the police remained major contributory factors to continued impunity in the country.
In the context of rising crime levels, widespread lynchings were reported. In some cases the army, police or other officials were alleged to have initiated the abuses. There were reports of so-called ''social cleansing'', when indigents, street children or other ''undesirables'' were reportedly harassed, attacked or murdered by armed individuals or groups. In July, for example, the bodies of two street youths were found in Zone 1 of Guatemala City. One had been slashed to death with machetes by unidentified assailants in the presence of witnesses. The other died of multiple knife wounds, after a similar attack.
Bishop Juan José Gerardi, Bishop of Guatemala and Coordinator of the Human Rights Office of the Archbishop of Guatemala (odha), was battered to death by unidentified assailants in April in Guatemala City as he returned home. His murder came just two days after he had presided over the public presentation of the Roman Catholic Church's inter-diocesan Recuperation of the Historical Memory Project (remhi). Bishop Gerardi had been a driving force behind remhi, which synthesized testimonies collected over three years on the tens of thousands of extrajudicial executions and ''disappearances'' suffered by civilians, the large majority of whom were indigenous people, during the civil conflict which convulsed Guatemala over a period of more than three decades. remhi found the army responsible for some 79 per cent of the violations investigated, but also laid a number of past abuses against civilians at the door of the urng.
The army denied involvement in Bishop Gerardi's murder and the government promised a full inquiry. However, a special joint commission, comprising representatives of both the government and the Archbishopric, soon virtually ceased to function. By the end of the year neither the circumstances nor the perpetrators of the killing had been established. However, local human rights groups believed that the timing of the murder, coupled with irregularities in the investigation process and the government's failure to pursue leads indicating a political motive, strongly suggested that Bishop Gerardi had been extrajudicially executed as a warning to those seeking to identify perpetrators of past abuses. In November a former attorney general who had been contracted by the Church to assess the official inquiries into Bishop Gerardi's murder, concluded that the killing had all the hallmarks of an extrajudicial execution and that the priest arrested for the crime had been wrongly accused.
Public prosecutor Silvia Jérez Romero de Herrera was killed in a volley of gunfire in May while travelling in the countryside. It was believed that the security forces or those acting at their behest may have been responsible. Silvia Jérez Romero de Herrera had been involved in prosecuting the case of guerrilla leader Efraín Bámaca who ''disappeared'' after being taken into military custody in 1992 (see Amnesty International Reports 1994 to1996), thecase was also the subject of examination by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Silvia Jérez Romero de Herrera had also been handling a number of investigations into criminal offences, including kidnapping and drug-running, in which it was alleged that officials may have been involved.
In July prisoner of conscience Colonel Otto Noack began serving a 30-day prison sentence for ''indiscipline'' imposed on him for an interview withRadio Netherlands in which he said he believed the army should acknowledge and apologize to the Guatemalan people for atrocities committed during the civil conflict. When the Director of the ceh declared his support for Colonel Noack's stand and visited him in detention, he was criticized by government officials for exceeding his mandate and interfering in Guatemala's internal affairs.
One prisoner was executed; 37 others remained under sentence of death. In February Manuel Martínez Coronado, an indigenous peasant from eastern Guatemala, was executed by lethal injection – the first person to be executed by this method in Guatemala. He had been sentenced to death in 1995 for multiple homicide after a trial which fell short of international standards for fair trial. The victims were members of a family to whom he was related and with whom he had been contesting ownership of a small plot of land sufficient to sustain only one family (see Amnesty International Report 1998). The execution went ahead despite a request from the iachr that the execution be suspended until the iachr had had time to consider whether the trial proceedings had violated the American Convention on Human Rights. This was the second time that the Guatemalan authorities had ignored such a request from the iachr. The government also threatened to withdraw from the Convention on the grounds that the requests for such cautionary measures were an interference in national sovereignty. Despite the government's contention that lethal injection would be a more acceptable method of execution because it would ''take only 30 seconds'' and be painless, Manuel Martínez Coronado took some 18 minutes to die. Following expressions of dismay and revulsion after the public broadcast of his painful and prolonged execution and of the sobbing of his wife and children in an adjoining room, the government announced its intention to introduce legislation to ban journalists from witnessing executions, and declared that henceforth executions would no longer be broadcast.
Victims of threats and harassment included human rights, trade union and indigenous activists, journalists, religious leaders and lawyers, as well as witnesses, relatives and others involved in trying to clarify past human rights abuses. Only moments after the end of Bishop Gerardi's funeral service, Archbishop Próspero Peñados, other members of the clergy, and local human rights activists received telephone death threats. One threatened foreign priest fled abroad, in fear of his life. In July renewed threats were made against odha and remhi workers after delegates from both groups made declarations, during a visit to Europe, protesting at shortcomings in the inquiry into Bishop Gerardi's murder.
In June a colleague of Juan León, a founder member of Defensoría Maya, Mayan Defence, was approached by two armed men in the town of Sololá, Sololá department, who told him they intended to kill him, Juan León and several others from Defensoría Maya. It was believed that the threats may have been related to Defensoría Maya's efforts to bring former military commissioners, now demobilized, to trial for human rights violations committed during the civil conflict.
Also in June, defence lawyer Víctor Hugo Cano Recinos received a series of threatening telephone calls warning him to withdraw as chief defence counsel for three former policemen sentenced to death in 1996 for murder and attempted murder (see Amnesty International Report 1998). The proceedings that led to their convictons fell short of international standards. The three remained under sentence of death at the end of the year.
In the same month, members of the women's organization Mamá Maquín were assaulted by several men armed with grenades, machetes and firearms as they returned from meeting a returned refugee community in Ixcán, El Quiché department. The same day, members of Mamá Maquín in Guatemala City received telephone threats that they would be killed if they did not give up their efforts to ensure the safe return of refugees and the internally displaced and respect for their human rights, as agreed under the Peace Accords. The government's failure to protect members of Mamá Maquín and other human rights defenders from attacks or to identify and bring to justice those responsible, violated its undertaking under the 1994 Global Human Rights Accord, to ''… take measures to protect persons and institutions working in the field of human rights''.
In November Ramiro Contreras, a former prosecutor with the Public Prosecutor's Office, went into exile after receiving death threats. In October he had been assigned to the inquiry into the 1995 Xamán massacre in which 11 returned refugees, including children, were killed by soldiers in Alta Verapaz department (see Amnesty International Reports 1996 to1998). In a press conference prior to his departure, Ramiro Contreras stated that his efforts to advance the inquiry had received no support from the Public Ministry and that in fact he had been under pressure from top Ministry officials to manipulate evidence in the accused soldiers' favour. Witnesses, lawyers and other officials involved in the Xamán investigation have been subjected to continual threats and harassment; other witnesses have allegedly been bribed to change or withdraw their testimonies.
There was little progress in bringing those responsible for past human rights abuses to justice. The case of Juan José Cabrera (''Mincho''), the former opposition commander who ''disappeared'' after his arrest by the military in 1996 (see Amnesty International Report 1998), remained unresolved. Local human rights groups were critical of minugua's announcement in late September that it was turning over investigation of the case to the Public Ministry. minugua had itself stated in its June report that the Public Ministry's investigation of the case had up to that point been inefficient and unproductive.
However, in December, three civil patrollers were sentenced to death for their part in two massacres in 1982. Some 270 non-combatant indigenous peasants died in the massacres in Río Negro, Baja Verapaz department, and in Agua Fría, El Quiché department. This was the first time that anyone had been brought to justice for any of the estimated 400 to 500 massacres which took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Guatemala.
The fates of Gisela López and Carlos Ranferí Morales López, who relatives said had been killed in 1982 by the urng in the context of an internal power struggle, also remained unclarified.
Amnesty International called on the government to ensure that the inquiry into Bishop Gerardi's murder was exhaustive, transparent and public and that its findings were made public. Amnesty International also urged the authorities to implement effective guarantees for the security of all of those involved in human rights defence and the historical clarification process. In June and July the organization co-sponsored a European tour organized by odha to present remhi's findings and to ensure continued international pressure for Bishop Gerardi's killers to be brought to justice.
Amnesty International appealed on a number of occasions for commutation of the death sentence passed on Manuel Martínez Coronado, for medical personnel in Guatemala not to participate in any way in executions, and for the request of the iachr for cautionary measures to be granted.
In October Amnesty International appealed to us officials to grant visas to two witnesses of the 1982 Dos Erres massacre in which some 350 people were killed – one of 168 cases of human rights violations in Guatemala pending before the iachr – so that they could give their testimonies before the iachr in Washington.
In May Amnesty International submitted information about its concerns in Guatemala to the un Committee against Torture.
In the same month, the organization also launched a report, Guatemala: All the truth, justice for all, and a two-year worldwide action program to call attention to past human rights abuses which it felt needed to be addressed by the ceh and the Guatemalan authorities as a necessary step to building a firm and lasting peace in the country, as called for in the Peace Accord. Throughout the year Amnesty International submitted information to the ceh concerning cases which it considered merited the ceh's attention.

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