GUATEMALA
REPUBLIC OF
GUATEMALA
Head of state and
government: Alfonso Portillo
Death penalty:
retentionist
UN Women's Convention
and its Optional Protocol: ratified
Human rights abuses in
Guatemala reached levels not seen for many years. Among the
principal targets were those involved in challenging the impunity
enjoyed by those responsible for widespread massacres and other
atrocities during Guatemala's 30-year civil conflict. Those at
risk included human rights defenders, legal personnel, journalists
and land activists defending the rights of indigenous communities.
The run-up to the first round of elections in November 2003 saw a
further steep rise in political violence. There was little progress
in bringing to justice those responsible for human rights abuses or
in eliminating the structures responsible for past and current
abuses.
Background
It was widely believed that a
major contributory factor in the upsurge in political violence and
repression that characterized President Alfonso Portillo's
administration (2000-2003) was the control exercised by General
Efraín Ríos Montt behind the scenes. General
Ríos Montt, a founder member of the Frente Republicano Guatemalteco
(FRG), Guatemalan Republican
Front, was head of state during one of the most repressive periods
of the Guatemalan army's rural counter-insurgency campaign in
1982 and 1983.
During 2003 he faced lawsuits
both in Guatemala and abroad in connection with army-led massacres
carried out while he was head of state, which the
UN-sponsored Comisión para el Esclarecimiento
Histórico (CEH), Historical Clarification Commission,
judged had constituted genocide. Despite provisions in the
Constitution barring those who gained office through a coup from
contesting the presidency, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court
ruled in July that General Ríos Montt could stand as the FRG
candidate in the presidential elections. This resulted in
heightened tension and sparked off further violence and abuses.
There were numerous incidents of political violence in advance of
the first round of presidential elections in November. General
Ríos Montt failed to make it through to the second round in
December, which passed off without major incident and resulted in
the election of Óscar Berger of the Gran Alianza Nacional (GANA), Great National Alliance, as
President.
Failure to tackle
impunity
President Portillo failed to
deliver on repeated promises to implement the human rights elements
of the 1996 Peace Accords, which ended the civil conflict, or the
recommendations of the CEH created under the Accords.
Little progress was made in
resolving specific highprofile human rights cases. The few
convictions for human rights abuses obtained in the Guatemalan
courts, often after long and courageous struggles by relatives or
local human rights groups, faced continuing appeals or were
reversed. Witnesses and others involved in the cases remained at
risk of further abuses.
In October, the
Estado Mayor
Presidencial (EMP), Presidential High Command, the
military intelligence structure involved in human rights abuses
during the country's armed conflict and implicated in
high-profile human rights cases, was abolished, to be replaced by a
civilian agency. There were continuing concerns, however, that few
steps had been taken to ensure effective civilian oversight and
accountability.
Civil patrols, responsible
for grave abuses while serving as the army's civilian adjuncts
during the conflict years, remobilized and held violent
demonstrations demanding compensation for their wartime service.
Human rights groups and government officials opposing their demands
were threatened.
Payments were subsequently
made to them by President Portillo's government. However,
despite the CEH recommendation, comprehensive reparations for the
victims of violations by army and civil patrols had not been agreed
by the end of 2003.
Agreements reached through
the Inter-American system regarding reparations for specific past
abuses were generally not implemented. Neither were significant
steps taken to meet human rights conditions set by the May 2003
Consultative Group meeting of major donor countries and
institutions.
In March, the government
signed an agreement to establish a commission to investigate
clandestine structures responsible for attacks on human rights
defenders, lawyers, journalists and others. The Comisión para la
Investigación de Cuerpos Ilegales y Aparatos Clandestinos de
Seguridad (CICIACS), Commission to Investigate Illegal
Armed Groups and Clandestine Security Apparatus, which came about
as a result of lobbying by local human rights organizations, was
due to be established in 2005 as soon as Congress had approved
several important legal reforms.
· In May, the 2002 conviction of an army
officer for ordering the extrajudicial execution of anthropologist
Myrna Mack in 1990 was overturned. The court ruled on the
institutional responsibility of the EMP, an issue not argued by
either side, rather than the actions of the individual officer, and
acquitted him. An appeal was pending at the end of the
year.
· In October, the Constitutional Court
rejected the 2002 reversal of guilty verdicts passed in 2001
against three military officers for the extrajudicial execution of
Bishop Juan José Gerardi. The Bishop was killed in 1998, two
days after presenting the Guatemalan Roman Catholic Church's
findings on abuses during the conflict years. One of the three
officers convicted in 2001 was murdered in prison in January 2003,
allegedly as he was about to implicate other officers in the
murder. In October, Erick Urízar Barillas became the 14th
witness to the Bishop's death to be killed. An appeal in this
case was pending at the end of the year.
· Suits for genocide and crimes against
humanity filed in Guatemala and abroad against the former
governments of General Romeo Lucas García (1978-1982) and
Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983) continued to be
accompanied by intimidation and reprisals against the human rights
organizations and forensic experts involved in the cases. In March,
two workers at the Centro para la acción legal en derechos
humanos, Centre for Legal Action in Human Rights, Mario Minera and
Héctor Amílcar Mollinedo Caceros, were repeatedly
followed by suspicious individuals and in September, the
group's legal director, Fernando López, received a
written death threat. Staff of the Fundación de
Antropología Forense de Guatemala, Guatemalan Forensic
Anthropology Foundation, and their relatives were subjected to
repeated intimidation.
Abuses against human
rights defenders
Virtually every major
Guatemalan human rights organization suffered abuses. No one,
however prominent, was immune.
· Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta
Menchú was verbally harassed and manhandled by FRG
supporters in October when she went to the Constitutional Court to
challenge the Ríos Montt candidacy.
· In September, Eusebio Macario, co-founder of
the indigenous rights organization Consejo de Comunidades
Étnicas: Runujel Junam (CERJ), Council of Ethnic
Communities: We are all Equal, was killed by unidentified
assailants. A week earlier he had met indigenous villagers to
advise them of their right to reparations for conflict-related
abuses.
Abuses against lawyers and
judges
Several special prosecutors
assigned by the Public Prosecutor's Office to investigate
abuses against human rights defenders and the judiciary, as well as
national and regional staff of the Procuraduría de Derechos
Humanos (PDH),
Human Rights Procurator's Office, were threatened and
attacked.
· In June, José Israel López
López, an indigenous activist, lawyer and PDH worker in
Chimaltenango Department, was shot and killed by unidentified
assailants in Guatemala City. He had been investigating military
abuses and attacks against other human rights defenders and
indigenous survivors also working on such cases. Several other
prominent members of the Mayan community have been killed in recent
years. Lawyers, judges, prosecutors and witnesses involved in
high-profile human rights cases and initiatives to combat impunity
continued to be subjected to abuses.
· In April, unidentified assailants in Zacapa
Department attacked Special Prosecutor Manuel de Jesús
Barquín Durán, who had been assigned to investigate
abuses and corruption allegedly committed by officials in
neighbouring Izabal Department. His bodyguard was seriously injured
in the attack.
Journalists
attacked
Journalists targeted because
of their human rights reporting included Prensa Libre columnist Marielos Monzón, who
received anonymous threats after publication of her articles on the
2002 kidnapping, killing and decapitation of indigenous leader and
lawyer Antonio Pop Caal. The threats intensified at the beginning
of the year following her coverage of the initiatives by Graciela
Azmitia both in Guatemala and through the Inter-American human
rights protection system to establish responsibility for the 1981
"disappearance" of family members, including her
"disappeared" sister who was pregnant at the time. After
intruders raided her home in March, Marielos Monzón fled
abroad.
Abuses against
environmental activists
In July, armed men forced
their way into the Guatemala City home of environmental activist
Norma Maldonado, threatening occupants, destroying data and taking
film and other materials relating to the Mesa Global de Guatemala,
Guatemalan Global Alliance. The Alliance works with Guatemalan and
Mexican environmentalists to publicize concerns about feared
adverse effects of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas and
the Central American infrastructure development project, Plan
Puebla Panamá.
Election campaign violence At
least 16 political leaders were killed and many others attacked in
violence connected with the election campaign. Many more suffered
threats and intimidation. However, the most dramatic incidents
occurred in July when crowds, armed with machetes and clubs, were
apparently trucked into the capital by the FRG and then led by
party officials in violent attacks against individuals and
institutions including the Constitutional and Supreme Courts and
the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. Journalists were also targeted;
radio reporter Héctor Ramírez suffered a fatal heart
attack after being pursued by a mob.
Abuses arising out of land
conflicts
The government's failure
to implement the land-related elements of the Peace Accords and the
deteriorating economic situation of Guatemala's rural poor
contributed to widespread unrest in the countryside and continued
violent disputes over land tenure. Numerous activists defending
their communities against land claims by large landowners or
agricultural corporations have been killed in recent
years.
· Several land activists from the
Lanquín II community, Morales, Izabal Department, were
killed in 2003. The killings occurred in the context of a dispute
between the community and cattle ranchers, apparently supported by
local officials, trying to acquire banana plantation
lands.
Violence against
women
Many of Guatemala's
foremost human rights groups were set up by women seeking
"disappeared" relatives or campaigning for justice for
extrajudicially executed family members. They remained prominent in
combating impunity for abuses, including the widespread rape
perpetrated against non-combatant indigenous women during the
conflict, and campaigning for reparations for abuses and faced
constant threats, intimidation, and attacks including rape, by
those opposed to their activities.
In 2003 women's rights
defenders drew attention to alarming levels of violence against
women in the post-conflict period, including domestic violence and
the deaths of hundreds of women who had been subjected to various
forms of sexual violence before they were killed.
Lynchings
Numerous people died in mob
lynchings. These were commonly portrayed as the result of
communities' frustration at the failure of the law to deal
adequately with real or perceived human rights violations and
ordinary crimes. However, there were claims that villagers were
being manipulated and incited to attack targeted individuals whom
local politicians or the security forces wished to have eliminated.
The instigators of many of these lynchings were reported to be
former members of the Civil Patrols.
Death penalty
Death sentences continued to
be passed for a range of common crimes. More than 30 people
remained on death row at the end of the year; however, no
executions took place.
International
concerns
The grave human rights
situation provoked increasing expressions of concern and
international missions of inquiry to the country. In September the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expressed concern at the
deteriorating human rights situation, while the UN extended the
mandate of its observer mission, MINUGUA, for an additional year.
In September it was announced that an expanded office of the UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights in Guatemala from 2004 would
monitor human rights and provide targeted technical
assistance.
AI country
visits
Reports
Deep cause for concern
– Amnesty International's assessment of the current human
rights situation in Guatemala
(AI Index: AMR
34/022/2003)
Guatemala: Accountable
intelligence or recycled repression? Abolition of the EMP and
effective intelligence reform
(AI Index: AMR
34/031/2003)
Guatemala: Legitimacy on the
line – human rights and the 2003 Guatemalan
elections
(AI Index: AMR
34/051/2003)
Guatemala: Open letter from
Amnesty International to Guatemalan presidential candidates for the
November 2003 elections
(AI Index:
34/052/2003)
Visits
AI delegates visited the
country in March and June to collect information on human rights,
including on economic, social and cultural rights, and to assess
the risks facing human rights defenders. Delegates raised concerns
with government officials.
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