Amnesty International Report 1996 - Guatemala

Over 150 extrajudicial executions and scores of "disappearances" were reported. The perpetrators were members of the security forces and government-backed armed groups including civil patrols and newly-created "self-defence" squads. Victims included indigenous activists, former refugees, religious personnel, street children and trade unionists. There were continuing reports of torture and ill-treatment by the security forces. People involved in human rights work were subjected to harassment and death threats. Little progress was made in clarifying thousands of cases of past human rights violations. The government and the armed opposition agreed a cease-fire in August, the first in 35 years of civil conflict. Presidential and congressional elections were held in November. There was no outright winner and a second round of elections was scheduled for early 1996. UN-brokered peace negotiations between the government and the armed opposition, originally scheduled to have been completed in December 1994, continued throughout 1995. In March an agreement on the identity and rights of indigenous peoples was signed. However, it appeared that previous agreements were not respected despite the presence of the Misión de las Naciones Unidas para la verificación de derechos humanos en Guatemala (MINUGUA), UN Mission for Guatemala (see Amnesty International Report 1995). Reflecting reports and statements by MINUGUA and the UN Expert on Guatemala, an August resolution of the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities expressed deep concern at the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators of human rights violations in Guatemala and at the inability of the judicial system to bring those responsible to justice. The Clarification Commission to look into human rights violations, agreed in June 1994 as part of the peace negotiations, was unable to start work in the absence of a signed peace agreement (see Amnesty International Report 1995). In March the Guatemalan Congress passed a law extending the death penalty to those convicted of involvement in kidnapping or abduction, their accomplices and those attempting to cover up such crimes. However, President Ramiro de León Carpio neither ratified nor vetoed the law within the legally specified period, leaving its status unclear at the end of the year. In June President de León announced the "demobilization" of military commissioners, as required by the March 1994 human rights accord (see Amnesty International Report 1995). Since the 1930s, military commissioners had acted as local agents of the army, responsible for forced military conscription and passing information to the army. They had been implicated in numerous human rights abuses including the extrajudicial execution in July 1993 of publisher and politician Jorge Carpio Nicolle (see Amnesty International Reports 1994 and 1995). The government claimed that forced military conscription had ended, but cases continued to be reported. Local human rights groups were concerned that the commissioners would continue to operate as civilians. The government encouraged the formation of new civilian "self-defence" squads, armed and trained by the military, ostensibly as a response to a rise in urban crime. These squads, civil patrols (civilian militia in which Guatemala's largely indigenous peasants are forced to serve) and a number of new vigilante groups apparently acting with official complicity were reportedly responsible for killing members of juvenile gangs and petty criminals as part of a campaign of "social cleansing". These new "death squads" were also implicated in human rights abuses against suspected opponents of the government. In June, six people, including representatives of MINUGUA and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees who were negotiating the peaceful return of refugees to a site in El Quiché Department, were briefly taken hostage by a civil patrol commanded by a military commissioner. Over 150 extrajudicial executions and scores of "disappearances" were reported, but the true total was believed to be significantly higher. Peasants, many of them indigenous, continued to be subjected to human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions and "disappearances", many of which took place in the context of land disputes with local landowners. Arnoldo Xi, a member of an indigenous peasant organization, the Coordinadora Nacional Indígena y Campesina, National Indigenous and Peasant Coordinating Committee, was shot and abducted by heavily armed men in March, near the community of Matucuy, Purula, Baja Verapaz Department. Arnoldo Xi's companion escaped and reported that private security guards employed by landowners and acting with the cooperation and acquiescence of the security forces were responsible. Arnoldo Xi's fate and whereabouts were unknown at the end of the year. In October, 11 people were killed when soldiers opened fire on former refugees and displaced persons resettled at Xamán, Chisec, Alta Verapaz Department. Among the victims was an eight-year-old boy reportedly shot as the soldiers retreated. Some 17 other villagers were injured in the attack. Witnesses stated that the army patrol entered the community as villagers were preparing to celebrate the first anniversary of their return to Guatemala. After an argument about the right of the army patrol to enter the community in the light of UN-brokered agreements guaranteeing the security of returned refugees and displaced persons, soldiers opened fire indiscriminately and exploded several grenades. Three soldiers were wounded by their own fire. Officials initially denied any army involvement, then claimed the patrol had been attacked after entering Xamán at the villagers' invitation. The Minister of Defence, General Mario Enríquez, was forced to resign, President de León announced a high-level commission of inquiry, and the entire patrol was reportedly arrested and placed under the jurisdiction of a military court. Priests, pastors and religious personnel involved in human rights work were among those who were killed or who "disappeared". Manuel Saquic Vásquez, an evangelical pastor and coordinator of a Kaqchikel Maya Human Rights Committee in Panabajal, Chimaltenango Department, was abducted on 23 June and reportedly tortured before being stabbed to death. His body was recovered from the Chimaltenango cemetery on 7 July; his throat had been slit and he had 33 stab wounds. Officials had reportedly known his burial place for some time, but had failed to inform either his family and colleagues or MINUGUA. Church officials reported that his offices had been under surveillance by a local military commissioner for several weeks before his abduction. Local residents believed he was killed because of his human rights work and because he was the sole witness to a previous abduction by the same military commissioner. Four people investigating his killing received death threats. In August Daniel Alvarez de Paz, an evangelical pastor, was killed in Japón Nacional, Suchitepéquez Department. Investigations into his killing and into that of Belgian priest Alfonso Stessel in an outlying district of Guatemala City in Decem-ber 1994 suggested that the killings were extrajudicial executions. The order to kill Father Stessel was reportedly issued to a juvenile gang by a government official whom Father Stessel was investigating in relation to an earlier attack on a trade union official. In June, 17-year-old Edwin Américo Orantes Martínez was shot dead and another youth was wounded by a man identifying himself as a member of the Dirección de Investigaciones Criminológicas, Criminal Inquiries Division, of the National Police. Two nearby uniformed policemen did not pursue the assailant, but instead briefly arrested another youth who had run for help. The case was referred to the Public Ministry for investigation. Trade unionists were also targeted for attack. Jhonny Martínez López, a teacher and member of the Sindicato de Trabajadores de Educación de Guatemala, Education Workers Trade Union, was abducted in June. His body was found in an anonymous grave in the general cemetery in Cobán in August. His killing was reportedly ordered by plantation owners who allegedly bribed officials not to investigate his death. Teachers pressing for an investigation into his killing reportedly received death threats. There were continuing reports of torture and ill-treatment by the security forces. In March civil patrol members beat Juan Sirín Raxjal and dragged him along the ground, breaking his leg, when he was late for patrol duty. They accused him of being a subversive. Human rights activists, trade unionists, journalists and others were subjected to harassment and intimidation. Workers in textile assembly plants and their relatives were harassed and threatened, apparently to prevent unionization at the plants and to keep wages low. In February Débora Guzmán Chupén, a trade union leader, was abducted, bound, blindfolded, injected with a drug and threatened with death. She was released the following day but continued to receive death threats. In March Catarina Terraza Chávez, an Ixil Maya and a local leader of the largely indigenous Coordinadora Nacional de Viudas de Guatemala, National Coordinating Committee of Widows of Guatemala, an organization of women whose husbands have been extrajudicially executed or made to "disappear" by the army, was assaulted and threatened by an army intelligence officer. She had just returned from Guatemala City where she had participated in a protest against continuing human rights violations in indigenous areas. She had reportedly been assaulted by the same officer in January 1994 when she was seven months pregnant. Little progress was made in clarifying the fate of tens of thousands of victims of past human rights abuses or in bringing those responsible to justice. Independent forensic groups undertook further exhumations at sites where large-scale extrajudicial executions had been reported during the army's counter-insurgency campaign of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The remains of several hundred people were uncovered, but no investigations were known to have been undertaken by official bodies to determine how the victims died or who was responsible. Government officials continued to obstruct efforts to exhume victims of human rights violations buried in some of the 100 or more clandestine cemeteries believed to exist in Guatemala. In July members of the independent Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense, Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, recovered the remains of at least 171 people at Las Dos Erres in El Petén Department, where 350 men, women and children had report-edly been extrajudicially executed by the Guatemalan army in 1982. Sixty-seven of those exhumed were children under 12. Some victims were bound; others had bullet wounds to their skulls. The local military commissioner reportedly tried to impede the exhumation by threatening witnesses, relatives, Guatemalan human rights monitors and members of the forensic team. Information surfaced concerning the involvement of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with Guatemalan military officials linked to abuses including the torture, "disappearance" and extrajudicial execution of US citizens or their relatives. US citizen Jennifer Harbury persisted in her efforts to exhume the remains of her husband, Efraín Bámaca, an opposition commander who "disappeared" after having been wounded in combat with the Guatemalan army in 1992 (see Amnesty International Reports 1994 and 1995). The Guatemalan military maintained that he died in combat. However, in March US Congressman Robert Torricelli made public information confirming that Efraín Bámaca had been taken into custody by the army, tortured, then extrajudicially executed, and that US officials had known this for some time before informing Jennifer Harbury. Congressman Torricelli's information also suggested that both the death of Efraín Bámaca and of US citizen Michael Devine, killed in 1990, had been carried out by troops under the command of a Guatemalan colonel, who was being paid by the cia at the time of their deaths. US President Bill Clinton ordered an official inquiry into these and other cases involving US citizens which led to disciplinary action against several cia employees. In Guatemala, however, those named as implicated in the deaths were not arrested or charged. Jennifer Harbury, a former soldier with information about the case and Dr Eduardo Arango Escobar, the Public Ministry prosecutor assigned to investigate the case, received death threats. Dr Arango withdrew from the case after his office was fired upon in June; the soldier left Guatemala. Amnesty International repeatedly called on the Guatemalan authorities to carry out genuine inquiries into both past and new human rights violations. Amnesty International delegates who visited the country in March and April collected testimony from victims of and witnesses to human rights violations. The delegates reiterated to government officials the organization's view that impunity had to be ended as a necessary step towards preventing further violations. In November the organization submitted information on Guatemala to the UN Committee against Torture.