Amnesty International Report 1994 - Guatemala

Extrajudicial executions continued to be carried out with almost total impunity by the security forces and their civilian agents, including so-called "civil patrols" - civilian militias in which Guatemala's largely indigenous peasants are forced to serve. Several people "disappeared". There were reports of excessive use of lethal force by members of the security forces and civilian militias, resulting in possible extrajudicial executions. Human rights activists and suspected government opponents were subjected to harassment and death threats. The Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence on a soldier for killing four peasants in 1992, but it was commuted. Talks to end long-term armed conflict between government forces and the armed opposition broke down in May. They remained stalled on issues such as the scope of negotiations; whether the UN could mediate and verify accords without agreement by both parties; the establishment of a Truth Commission to examine past abuses; abolition of the civil patrols; the reincorporation into Guatemalan life of refugees and displaced persons; and the terms of any eventual amnesty for government and opposition combatants. Unrest swept the capital, Guatemala City, in May as students and trade unionists demonstrated against cost of living increases and government policies. On 25 May President Jorge Serrano, the first elected civilian president to succeed an elected civilian president in Guatemalan history, announced that he would rule by decree. He was apparently pressed by elements within the security forces who feared that a Truth Commission would challenge military impunity and were determined to oppose demands from refugees and internally displaced peasants living outside military control in so-called "communities in resistance" (CPRs). President Serrano suspended the Supreme and Constitutional Courts, the offices of the Attorney General and the Human Rights Procurator, and certain constitutional guarantees; Congress was dissolved and arrest orders issued for several top officials including the Human Rights Procurator, Ramiro de León Carpio. However, within days, an unprecedented alliance of more moderate sectors of the army, opposition parties, business leaders, human rights groups and popular organizations reversed the attempted "auto-golpe" ("self-coup"). Both President Serrano and Vice President Gustavo Espina were forced into exile abroad. Widespread discontent at corruption allegedly involving high-level officials, including former President Serrano, and international pressure contributed to the reversal of the attempted coup. On 6 June Congress elected former Human Rights Procurator Ramiro de León Carpio as President. He promised to improve Guatemala's human rights situation and to end corruption and impunity. The Presidential High Command, implicated in recent human rights violations, was restructured and its intelligence gathering functions removed. However, reports of abuses persisted, as did rumours of plots to overthrow the new President, apparently because of his repeated unsuccessful attempts to purge corrupt officials. Extrajudicial executions by the security forces and their civilian agents were reported both before and after the change of government. By August, Guatemalan human rights groups claimed that 149 extrajudicial executions had occurred during 1993. Some victims were shot outright in the presence of witnesses; others were abducted by armed men in civilian clothes believed to be security force members, then tortured and murdered. Apparent extrajudicial executions reported under President Serrano included that of Luis Arturo Alvarez Concoa, a law student who "disappeared" after leaving the Universidad de San Carlos (USAC), University of San Carlos, in Guatemala City in March. His mutilated body was found in April. Staff and students of USAC, which was characterized by successive governments as a "centre of subversion," have long been targets of government abuse. In April Tomás Lares Cipriano, a Quiché member of the indigenous peasant organization Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC), Committee for Peasant Unity, and the indigenous rights group Consejo de Comunidades étnicas "Runujel Junam" (CERJ), Council of Ethnic Communities "We are all Equal", became the 17th CERJ member known to have been killed since CERJ's founding in 1988. He was shot dead the day after organizing protests against the presence in his area of military and civil patrols. The Public Ministry said it had summoned members of the civil patrol allegedly responsible to testify, but there was no further news on the case. One street youth, Henry Yubani Alvarez Benítez, was known to have been killed by the police in 1993: he was shot dead in Guatemala City by an officially licensed private security policeman. No one was apparently brought to justice for his death. In February trade union leader Carlos Ranferi Gómez survived an apparent extrajudicial execution attempt when four heavily armed hooded men stopped a bus on which he was travelling, singled him out and shot him. His assailants seized material he had just gathered from CPRs and returned refugee settlement sites. Apparent extrajudicial executions reported after President de León came to office included those of his cousin and long-term political ally, Jorge Carpio Nicolle, two members of Jorge Carpio Nicolle's political party and a member of his security guard. They were all killed in El Quiché department, weeks after the new President's inauguration. Jorge Carpio Nicolle was the owner and publisher of an influential newspaper. Initially, witnesses blamed the armed opposition; later, officials suggested the victims died during a robbery. However, discrepancies between information released by the police and the military and the fact that the victims were not robbed led relatives to conclude that Jorge Carpio was extrajudicially executed because of his prominent role in the alliance which drove former President Serrano from office. They rejected army efforts to implicate CUC member Tom s Pérez Pérez, as the killers did not have peasant accents. According to the CUC, documents were planted at Tom s Pérez' home and he was tortured to make him sign statements that the CUC and the opposition were involved. Jorge Carpio's wife reported receiving death threats because of her campaign for genuine inquiries into the murders. The indiscriminate use of lethal force by the security forces and their agents was reported, resulting in possible extrajudicial executions. The army continued aerial bombings of CPRs in which non-combatant civilians were reportedly wounded. In August Juan Pablo Chanay was killed and several others wounded when civil patrollers from Colotenango, Huehuetenango department, indiscriminately fired upon villagers peacefully protesting against harassment by the army and patrollers. President de León promised that those responsible would be prosecuted, but no proceedings were known to have been initiated. "Disappearances" reported after President de León came to office included that of indigenous activist Tom s López Chitic, who was detained in October by armed men in plain clothes at his home in Suchitepéquez department. There was no further news of him. Others who were initially reported to have "disappeared" later reappeared; many had been tortured in custody. Elizabeth Recinos Alvarez de León and Eluvia de Salam, two trade union leaders, were abducted in Guatemala City on 17 June by men in civilian clothes. Eluvia de Salam was released the following day, but Elizabeth Recinos was found unconscious in the street on 23 June, with two broken ribs. She had been beaten, kicked and drugged while being interrogated about her allegations of congressional corruption. In October, Marco Choco Damas, a Quekchí literacy promoter with the Consejo Nacional de Desplazados de Guatemala (CONDEG), National Council for the Displaced of Guatemala, "disappeared" after being detained by soldiers in Baja Verapaz department. There were fears that he had been killed or forcibly recruited by the army, but he was freed without explanation in November from the Baja Verapaz army base. Suspected opponents of the government and human rights activists were subjected to intimidation, including death threats. Guillermo Armando Estrada Quezada, a student leader in the May demonstrations against the cost of living, and Amílcar David Montejo García, who criticized President Serrano's education policies on television, both received death threats. In September, a bomb exploded in the offices of the Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM), Mutual Support Group, a group attempting to clarify the fate of the "disappeared". A few hours later, members of FAMDEGUA, another group of relatives of the "disappeared", received a telephone call threatening that they too would be bombed if they did not close their office. An anonymous communique in Octo-ber warned indigenous leader Rigoberta Menchú, the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Héctor Rosada, head of President de León's official delegation to the peace talks, and 20 others that their days "were numbered" because of supposed links with the armed opposition. Also in October, President de León commuted the death sentence, which had been upheld by the Supreme Court, on a soldier, Nicol s Gutiérrez Cruz, for the January 1992 killings of four displaced indigenous people in Solol department, despite apparently widespread domestic support for his execution. Tens of thousands of past human rights violations remained uninvestigated, while those involved in inquiries suffered threats and abuses. In April a 30-year sentence was upheld on Noel de Jesús Beteta, formerly with the Presidential High Command, for the 1990 murder of anthropologist Myrna Mack (see Amnesty International Reports 1991 to 1993). However, the institute where she had worked was entered on several occasions in 1993 by unidentified men in plain clothes who threatened those involved in the case, particularly the victim's sister, and twice attacked institute staff. In October, two former soldiers sentenced to long prison terms for the 1990 murder of a US citizen, Michael Devine (see Amnesty International Reports 1992 and 1993), said that they, and several others including Noel de Beteta, were willing to name superior officers who had ordered "death squad" killings. However, they withdrew their testimonies, allegedly after threats from the military high command. Subsequently, five prisoners were found dead in their cells, one of them a close friend of Noel de Beteta. Initially, the government claimed all had committed suicide, but the toxicology department of USAC found that all had been drugged and murdered. Those sentenced in 1993 for human rights abuses included two civil patrollers convicted of the murder of a father and son in 1991; a senior police chief and four other officers who had violently broken up a peaceful demonstration of indigenous people in Guatemala City in July 1992; and a number of military agents convicted of killing Julio Cuc Quim, a student, in 1992, although the case against the commander of the unit responsible was left open (see Amnesty International Report 1993). However, a one-year suspended sentence against a member of the Mobile Military Police for the beating of two street youths in January 1991 was overturned and he was unconditionally released. Other inquiries into reported violations failed to make significant progress owing to lack of official cooperation. In March, two former combatants who claimed to have escaped from unacknowledged detention by the Guatemalan military made detailed allegations to the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) and the Organization of American States (OAS). They testified that they had seen or heard of other unacknowledged prisoners, including Efraín B maca Vel squez, an opposition commander who the army claimed had died in combat in 1992. In August a body exhumed from the grave where the army claimed he was buried proved not to be his. However, there were no official efforts to locate either Efraín B maca or others allegedly held in secret detention. Similarly, the official response to the exhumation of the remains of some 150 people at Rio Negro, Baja Verapaz department, was to claim that they had been killed by "guerrillas". However, in 1982, Amnesty International had recorded allegations that some 170 villagers had been killed there by the army. Amnesty International repeatedly called on the government to investigate all reported human rights violations and to bring those responsible to justice. In May it published a report, Guatemala: Impunity - a question of political will, in which it said that the security forces and their auxiliaries must obey national and international laws and cooperate fully with human rights investigations. Also in May an Amnesty International delegation visited Guatemala to manifest concern that President Serrano's attempted coup represented an unacceptable risk to human rights protection. Following the reversal of the coup attempt, Amnesty International's delegation pressed the newly inaugurated President to move decisively to end abuses. In March Amnesty International submitted a written statement to the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) in which it insisted that investigation of past violations was vital to halt abuses. A new UN Expert on Guatemala was appointed in November after prolonged government efforts to delay ratification by the Economic and Social Council of the UNCHR's March resolution on Guatemala. After a September visit to Guatemala, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS recommended that because of "continued friction and violations of human rights", the civil patrols should be disbanded or transformed into institutions "appropriate to a democratic society." In an oral statement to the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations in July, Amnesty International included reference to its concerns in Guatemala.