Covering events from January - December 2002

REPUBLIC OF GUATEMALA
Head of state and government: Alfonso Portillo
Death penalty: retentionist
International Criminal Court: not signed

The human rights situation continued to deteriorate. Those principally targeted for abuses were people attempting to implement the indigenous, labour and land rights elements of the 1996 Peace Accords or trying to combat the ongoing impunity for the gross human rights violations of the conflict years. Progress remained slow on implementation of the Accords and the recommendations of the UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission established under them. A military official was convicted for ordering an extrajudicial execution during the conflict, but days later the convictions of three other military officials found guilty in 2001 of an extrajudicial execution were overturned. Efforts to secure convictions locally for other high-profile human rights abuses continued to face delays, irregularities and legal obstructions. Universal jurisdiction suits abroad remained unresolved. The civil defence patrols re-emerged, demanding recompense for their often enforced service during the conflict. Government efforts to meet their demands suggested official acceptance of the patrols and the abuses they committed during the conflict and appeared inconsistent with the Peace Accords. Further lynchings by former civil patrollers were reported.


Background

Guatemala suffered civil conflict for more than 30 years until the military and armed opposition agreed far-reaching Peace Accords in 1996. The accession to the presidency in 2000 of Alfonso Portillo signalled the return to power of the Frente Republicano Guatemalteco, Guatemalan Republican Front, a party strongly linked to the military. His government was widely held to be controlled by General Efraín Ríos Montt – the current President of Congress and a military leader during one of the worst periods of repression – and the "parallel power structures" linked to him.

The notorious Presidential Chief of Staff Unit (EMP), which was to have been disbanded under the Accords, continued to operate and its budget was increased. The government continued to call on the army for policing operations. The Peace Secretariat, mandated to monitor implementation of the Accords, reportedly lost funding to the EMP.

The continuing influence of General Ríos Montt and his supporters, and the failure to bring those responsible for past gross human rights violations to justice except in a handful of hard-fought cases, encouraged past perpetrators and others to abuse their authority and commit new abuses with impunity.

The state's failure to combat impunity or provide reparations and mental health programs for the victims, including indigenous women who suffered rape and sexual abuse by the army and civil patrols during the conflict, left many suffering what has been described as a "national trauma". However, some child survivors of massacres who were put up for adoption traced surviving relatives, and new groups continued to try and locate children who "disappeared" during the conflict.

Widespread corruption and increases in tension in the run-up to elections scheduled for 2003 were linked to new human rights abuses.

Attacks on the human rights community

The human rights community continued to suffer death threats and intimidation almost daily. Many offices were raided and equipment and computer records stolen. Two apparent extrajudicial executions seemed to be aimed at intimidating prominent human rights groups.

  • In October, Guillermo Ovalle de León of the Rigoberta Menchú Foundation was shot dead in Guatemala City. Manuel García de la Cruz, who was active in the efforts of the National Coordination of Guatemalan Widows (CONAVIGUA) to have mass graves exhumed in indigenous areas in Guatemala and to protect indigenous rights, was seized, tortured and killed in September in El Quiché Department.
  • In March threats were directed at 11 forensic scientists involved in exhumations aimed at collecting evidence relating to army massacres carried out during the conflict. Those making the threats clearly had links with the military.
Land conflict and abuses

Abuses escalated against those pressing for implementation of the land rights aspects of the Peace Accords.
  • In March several indigenous rural workers' leaders were threatened in San Marcos and Retalhuleu Departments, and in San Marcos Department several people connected to the Church suffered death threats and other intimidation because of their efforts to mediate between powerful private landowners and indigenous peasants claiming land title under Guatemala's 1944 land reform.
  • Also in March, land activists claiming banana lands in Morales, Izabal Department, were attacked by police and paramilitaries linked to local landowners. One prominent activist was killed.
  • Several peasant leaders in Alta Verapaz Department reported death threats in October. On 14 October at Senahú, about a thousand Special Police and National Civil Police violently dislodged women and children from land they were occupying; four women and eight children reportedly "disappeared".
Corruption-related abuses

A growing number of human rights abuses were attributed to or were carried out on behalf of the so-called "corporate mafia state", a criminal alliance of officials, business, elements of the police and military, and common criminals who collude to tighten their control of legal extractive industries, as well as illegal operations, including drugs and arms trafficking, money laundering, car theft, kidnapping for ransom, illegal adoptions and illicit use of state-protected lands.

The Guatemalan Anti-Narcotics Department (DOAN) was regularly implicated in illegal drug trafficking, allegedly in complicity with trafficking cartels, the judiciary, the police and the military as well as highly placed government officials. The DOAN reportedly committed serious human rights violations to eliminate competition. The disbandment of the DOAN, called for by the US authorities, was announced in October.
  • In January DOAN agents raided the small hamlet of Chocón, Livingston, in Izabal Department. Two villagers were killed and one "disappeared". Other villagers were detained and tortured, and then accused of the killings.
Continuing efforts to combat impunity

Myrna Mack case
Anthropologist Myrna Mack was extrajudicially executed in 1990, months after she published her findings that government counter-insurgency policies had caused internal displacement of Guatemala's indigenous peoples and their resultant suffering. In 1993, after a sustained campaign by her sister Helen Mack, a low-ranking member of the EMP was found guilty of the killing and jailed for 25 years. However, Helen Mack continued to press for prosecution of the military officials she believed had ordered her sister's death. The case against three higher-ranking military officials finally came to court in 2002, but as the trial approached, those acting for Helen Mack were threatened. In August, the home of her lawyer, Robert Romero, was fired on and he received anonymous telephoned death threats. In October, an army colonel was sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment for ordering Myrna Mack's death. His two superior officers in the EMP were acquitted.

Gerardi verdicts annulled
Days after the Myrna Mack case concluded, the convictions were overturned of three military officers who had been found guilty in 2001 of the killing of Bishop Juan José Gerardi in 1998, two days after he presented the Guatemalan Church's detailed report on abuses during the conflict years. A priest sentenced as an accessory also had his conviction overturned. The case may eventually return to court, with many of the original witnesses in exile abroad or dead, the victims of apparent extrajudicial executions.

Genocide proceedings
By mid-2002, the Special Cases Department of the Public Prosecutor's Office had taken statements from some 100 eyewitnesses, completed four inspections at massacre sites and received forensic reports of exhumations at all the massacre sites in relation to charges of genocide and other crimes against humanity filed in Guatemala against the military high commands of Generals Romeo Lucas García (1979-1982) and Ríos Montt (March 1982-August 1983). The charges had been laid by massacre survivors grouped as the Asociación Justicia y Reconciliación, Association for Justice and Reconciliation. Three of the accused officials in the Ríos Montt proceedings also submitted documents and testified before the Special Prosecutor.

Rigoberta Menchú Foundation case
At the end of the year, the decision was still awaited from the Spanish Supreme Court regarding the Spanish High Court's December 2000 decision that it did not currently have jurisdiction to hear the Rigoberta Menchú Foundation's 1999 suit against former Guatemalan officials, including General Ríos Montt, for genocide and other crimes against humanity. AI made public its own legal analysis, which found that the Spanish courts did have jurisdiction to hear the case.

Proceedings through the Inter-American system
Despite entry by the Guatemalan government into "friendly agreements" negotiated under the auspices of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, under which Guatemala accepted that state institutions had been responsible for specific past abuses and agreed to pay compensation for them, proceedings against those allegedly responsible stalled. In the case of the 1982 massacre of 300 people at Dos Erres, El Petén, by a Guatemalan army unit, the kaibiles, eight years had elapsed since judicial proceedings were initiated but arrest warrants requested by the Public Ministry had still to be implemented.

Lynchings

Lynchings instigated or carried out by former civil patrollers continued to be reported against a background of rising crime and lack of faith in the justice system to combat crime or impunity. In mid-2002, the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala reported that there had been 354 such lynchings since 1996.

Death penalty

Thirty people remained on death row, but no death sentences were passed and no executions were carried out. In July, following a call for a moratorium from the Vatican prior to Pope John Paul II's visit to Guatemala, President Portillo announced his intention to ensure that no further executions would be carried out during his presidency. He submitted to Congress proposed legislation to abolish the death penalty, but it was not approved.

International concern

In February the Consultative Group of principal donor countries and international institutions named several areas, including human rights protection and impunity, where it wanted to see progress before funds would be disbursed.

Hina Jilani, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on human rights defenders, visited Guatemala in June and called on the government to take steps to combat impunity and protect human rights defenders from threats and intimidation.

In October, several high-level US officials expressed concern before the US Congress regarding corruption in Guatemala, the deteriorating human rights situation, the paralysed Peace Accords and the links between government agencies and officials and organized crime.

AI country visits

In February an AI delegation visited Guatemala and collected human rights data, raised concerns with government officials and met representatives of the human rights community. In July AI attended the Second Regional Consultation on Human Rights Defenders in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Guatemala.

This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.