25 November 1999 Edition
Guatemala's bloody ordeal
Guatemala has recently emerged from four decades of conflict. After 17 June 1954, when an armed coup, financed by the United States, overthrew the elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, the population was subjected to a bloody state-sponsored campaign to exterminate all opposition. Four years later, this brutal regime led to civil war. The Oslo Agreement, signed in 1994, led to the 1996 Definitive Peace Accord between the Guatemalan state and the guerrilla organisation Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG). This put an end to the military conflict and was the beginning of a healing and national reconciliation process.
A Historical Clarification Commission was set up under the auspices of the United Nations. This commission, following the end of hostilities, was given the task of accomplishing its work of investigating four decades of genocide and human rights abuses in only a year, and it was prohibited from naming those responsible for the atrocities. In the end, the investigation ran for 18 months.
In October 1994, the Catholic Church primate in Guatemala, Archbishop Próspero Penados del Barrio, established the Recovery of Historical Memory (REMHI) project, a church initiative to study human rights violations. The pastoral teams of eleven dioceses and indigenous leaders conducted this study. The search for information concentrated on rural communities, whose physical inaccessibility and linguistic diversity complicated the task. Their final report, titled ``Guatemala: Never Again'', documenting the testimonies of thousand of people who were bereaved, injured, and widowed during the 36-year war in Guatemala, was presented in April 1998. Just two days later, the project coordinator, Bishop Juan Gerardi, was assassinated.
Guatemalan president Alvaro Arzú's government rejected suggestions that Gerardi's killing was political, but human rights organisations have a very different opinion. As one human rights official said: ``The killers were those backward sectors in society who do not want to clarify the past and whose aim is to terrorise the population.''
Roberto Tepaz López, an indigenous Quiché speaker from Guatemala who worked with Bishop Gerardi on the REMHI report, was in Dublin on Wednesday 17 November for the launch of the English-language edition of the church report. ``The old people in our villages say that only those who conquer the past will be able to conquer the future,'' he said. ``When we started this work, people from the communities said to us: `We want our sons and daughters to remember. We hope that our youth and future generations know our stories and learn from it, so they never go through the same'.''
Before REMHI started their job, they contacted the Truth Commissions in South Africa, Argentina, and also El Salvador, ``so we could share their experiences, which were very valid'' although he explained that the Guatamalan situatioin also differed significantly.
In the 36 years of conflict, the Guatemalans experienced new methods of extermination and human rights violations. More than 200,000 people were killed, most of them victims of the military, which completely wiped out 626 separate indigenous communities. But the total number of those slaughtered is still unknown, Roberto explains. ``We only officially registered 35,000 dead. The Historical Clarification Commission increased the number of victims, but there are exhumations being carried out at the moment, and the people in these clandestine cemeteries were never accounted for in any of the reports.''
From Roberto's point of view, it was important that people who had suffered violence and repression would be able to express their feelings, ``that people themselves were allowed to explain their truth and their stories, and that in telling the truth they were also able to come to terms with what had happened to them and their relatives''.
To facilitate their work, REMHI simply asked the people from the rural communities to help them. ``In Guatemala, most of the people are illiterate. So, our interviewers, peasant women and men, were also illiterate. But these people enjoyed confidence and credibility within the community, as they were also victims of the violence. The interviews were carried out in secret locations. When the interviewer and the interviewee sat down, there were some people who just sat silently, unable to speak, others wept for hours, some talked nonstop for hours.'' All the statements were taken in the Mayan language. The Mayan communities were the most affected by repression and violence.
As the Historical Clarification Commission points out on its report, titled Guatemala, Memory of the Silence, ``there was a massive extermination of the Mayan population, including women, children and old people, using methods the cruelty of which would horrify the moral conscience of the civilised world''. The report pointed out that the worst cases of human rights violations took place between 1978 and 1983, during the so-called ``counter-insurgency operations'' against Mayan communities organised by the Efraín Rios Montt government.
The truth is surfacing, but Roberto has no great hopes that those responsible for the massacres and human rights violations in his country will be ever prosecuted. ``There was an amnesty in Guatemala for those responsible for human rights violations during the war. Also, we have a justice system which nobody trusts and where impunity reigns. And the people still fear reprisal if they speak out. There have been some cases taken to the courts, but just concerning low ranking army personnel. When questioned, the colonels in the army always reply that they ever, never, fired a bullet. The army is still very influential in the justice system in Guatemala right now. Perhaps in ten years time we will be able to tell a different story.''
The possible extradition of Chilean former general and dictator Augusto Pinochet to Spain to be tried for his responsibility for the killings and tortures carried out under his regime has created a certain expectation that ``it can be done to all the dictators in the world, and that will include Lucas García and Ríos Montt, who are responsible for the worst human right violations in Guatemala,'' says Roberto.
``But we will have to talk about his after 26 December, after the results from the second round of Guatemala's general election are announced, because after the first round the party that was once led by Ríos Montt has actually ended up with the largest representation in the congress. This is a very uncertain time for us. I do not know what we will be doing next year because I do not know what we will be allowed to do.''
While the world celebrated International Children's Day on Saturday, 20 November, UNICEF, the United Nations organisation responsible for Children's rights and welfare, released some very grim statistics, revealing that over 300,000 children are used as soldiers taking part in conflicts throughout the world and at least 250 million children are part of the workforce. A further million are forced into prostitution every year. UNICEF also highlighted the fact that nearly 12 million children will die this year due to the lack of basic medical attention.
Leading US Democratic Party politician, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, was recently arrested during a street protest at the gates of the Eisenhower high school in Decatur, a small industrial town in central Illinois. The protest was part of a campaign aimed at reinstating six black students expelled from the school. The six students Jackson was defending were expelled for two years after taking part in a dangerous touchline brawl during a school football game on 17 September last. Jackson says the case exemplifies how the ``zero tolerance'' regimes fashionable in American schools bear down mostly on black and ethnic minority students. Of the 1,700 students expelled or suspended last year by school authorities in Decatur, 60% are black, though the African-American population only makes up 12% of the town's population.
A Historical Clarification Commission was set up under the auspices of the United Nations. This commission, following the end of hostilities, was given the task of accomplishing its work of investigating four decades of genocide and human rights abuses in only a year, and it was prohibited from naming those responsible for the atrocities. In the end, the investigation ran for 18 months.
In October 1994, the Catholic Church primate in Guatemala, Archbishop Próspero Penados del Barrio, established the Recovery of Historical Memory (REMHI) project, a church initiative to study human rights violations. The pastoral teams of eleven dioceses and indigenous leaders conducted this study. The search for information concentrated on rural communities, whose physical inaccessibility and linguistic diversity complicated the task. Their final report, titled ``Guatemala: Never Again'', documenting the testimonies of thousand of people who were bereaved, injured, and widowed during the 36-year war in Guatemala, was presented in April 1998. Just two days later, the project coordinator, Bishop Juan Gerardi, was assassinated.
Guatemalan president Alvaro Arzú's government rejected suggestions that Gerardi's killing was political, but human rights organisations have a very different opinion. As one human rights official said: ``The killers were those backward sectors in society who do not want to clarify the past and whose aim is to terrorise the population.''
Roberto Tepaz López, an indigenous Quiché speaker from Guatemala who worked with Bishop Gerardi on the REMHI report, was in Dublin on Wednesday 17 November for the launch of the English-language edition of the church report. ``The old people in our villages say that only those who conquer the past will be able to conquer the future,'' he said. ``When we started this work, people from the communities said to us: `We want our sons and daughters to remember. We hope that our youth and future generations know our stories and learn from it, so they never go through the same'.''
Before REMHI started their job, they contacted the Truth Commissions in South Africa, Argentina, and also El Salvador, ``so we could share their experiences, which were very valid'' although he explained that the Guatamalan situatioin also differed significantly.
In the 36 years of conflict, the Guatemalans experienced new methods of extermination and human rights violations. More than 200,000 people were killed, most of them victims of the military, which completely wiped out 626 separate indigenous communities. But the total number of those slaughtered is still unknown, Roberto explains. ``We only officially registered 35,000 dead. The Historical Clarification Commission increased the number of victims, but there are exhumations being carried out at the moment, and the people in these clandestine cemeteries were never accounted for in any of the reports.''
From Roberto's point of view, it was important that people who had suffered violence and repression would be able to express their feelings, ``that people themselves were allowed to explain their truth and their stories, and that in telling the truth they were also able to come to terms with what had happened to them and their relatives''.
To facilitate their work, REMHI simply asked the people from the rural communities to help them. ``In Guatemala, most of the people are illiterate. So, our interviewers, peasant women and men, were also illiterate. But these people enjoyed confidence and credibility within the community, as they were also victims of the violence. The interviews were carried out in secret locations. When the interviewer and the interviewee sat down, there were some people who just sat silently, unable to speak, others wept for hours, some talked nonstop for hours.'' All the statements were taken in the Mayan language. The Mayan communities were the most affected by repression and violence.
As the Historical Clarification Commission points out on its report, titled Guatemala, Memory of the Silence, ``there was a massive extermination of the Mayan population, including women, children and old people, using methods the cruelty of which would horrify the moral conscience of the civilised world''. The report pointed out that the worst cases of human rights violations took place between 1978 and 1983, during the so-called ``counter-insurgency operations'' against Mayan communities organised by the Efraín Rios Montt government.
The truth is surfacing, but Roberto has no great hopes that those responsible for the massacres and human rights violations in his country will be ever prosecuted. ``There was an amnesty in Guatemala for those responsible for human rights violations during the war. Also, we have a justice system which nobody trusts and where impunity reigns. And the people still fear reprisal if they speak out. There have been some cases taken to the courts, but just concerning low ranking army personnel. When questioned, the colonels in the army always reply that they ever, never, fired a bullet. The army is still very influential in the justice system in Guatemala right now. Perhaps in ten years time we will be able to tell a different story.''
The possible extradition of Chilean former general and dictator Augusto Pinochet to Spain to be tried for his responsibility for the killings and tortures carried out under his regime has created a certain expectation that ``it can be done to all the dictators in the world, and that will include Lucas García and Ríos Montt, who are responsible for the worst human right violations in Guatemala,'' says Roberto.
``But we will have to talk about his after 26 December, after the results from the second round of Guatemala's general election are announced, because after the first round the party that was once led by Ríos Montt has actually ended up with the largest representation in the congress. This is a very uncertain time for us. I do not know what we will be doing next year because I do not know what we will be allowed to do.''
Children's Rights
While the world celebrated International Children's Day on Saturday, 20 November, UNICEF, the United Nations organisation responsible for Children's rights and welfare, released some very grim statistics, revealing that over 300,000 children are used as soldiers taking part in conflicts throughout the world and at least 250 million children are part of the workforce. A further million are forced into prostitution every year. UNICEF also highlighted the fact that nearly 12 million children will die this year due to the lack of basic medical attention.
United States
Leading US Democratic Party politician, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, was recently arrested during a street protest at the gates of the Eisenhower high school in Decatur, a small industrial town in central Illinois. The protest was part of a campaign aimed at reinstating six black students expelled from the school. The six students Jackson was defending were expelled for two years after taking part in a dangerous touchline brawl during a school football game on 17 September last. Jackson says the case exemplifies how the ``zero tolerance'' regimes fashionable in American schools bear down mostly on black and ethnic minority students. Of the 1,700 students expelled or suspended last year by school authorities in Decatur, 60% are black, though the African-American population only makes up 12% of the town's population.