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Rights-Guatemala: Death Threats Follow Mayan Genocide Lawsuits
IPS-Inter Press Service
By Danielle Knight
April 15, 2002

U.S. and Guatemalan rights activists voiced concern about the safety of ethnic Mayan communities that are suing two former dictators for genocide.

Twenty-two indigenous communities have filed lawsuits charging two former presidents, Efrain Rios Montt, the current head of the Central American country's congress, and Romeo Lucas Garcia with presiding over a brutal policy of racial extermination in the early 1980s, as part of Guatemala's 36-year civil war. The defendants have asserted their innocence.

Since the beginning of the year, intimidation, assaults, death threats, and abductions of witnesses and organizations supporting the lawsuits have increased, said Alex Arriaga, director for government relations at Amnesty International USA. The offices of human rights organizations have been ransacked and placed under electronic surveillance, she added.

Early last month, 11 forensic anthropologists who helped unearth evidence used in the cases received death threats. One of the eyewitness community leaders has been killed and other witnesses have been assaulted, said Arriaga.

"Having committed mass murder with impunity during the conflict years, those responsible see little reason now to limit threats, assaults, and other crimes against human rights defenders," she said.

In contrast, plaintiffs have encountered few legal obstacles in court -- at least so far, said Frank La Rue, executive director of the Guatemala-based Center for Human Rights Legal Action.

Since the cases were filed in 2000 and 2001, the attorney general has appointed a special prosecutor and testimony has been taken from more than 50 eyewitnesses, said La Rue. Suspected massacre sites also have been inspected.

"The cases are moving forward," he told U.S. lawmakers and activists here on Apr. 12. "There has been progress in Guatemala since the 1996 peace accord."

Mayan communities have voiced hope that the cases will bring justice to those who orchestrated the deaths of civilians. The suits estimated that 1,887 people were killed at the hands of the government in the 22 indigenous villages.

The United Nations-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification -- Guatemala's truth commission -- concluded that more than 200,000 people were killed in political violence between 1960 and 1996, and that more than 80 percent of them were indigenous people.

The report, which blamed the United States for supporting the right-wing military dictators, moved former President Bill Clinton to apologize for this country's role in the conflict.

Guatemalan military officials have denied the accusations of genocide and massacres. Those killed were leftist guerrillas who died in battle, they have said.

"How would it be possible to be genocide since most of the army was made up of indigenous people," Juan de Dios Estrada, a former defence minister, said last year.

The suits, however, claimed that the atrocities against indigenous groups were so widespread, and so systematically directed at Guatemala's indigenous peoples, that in four regions of the country, the actions amounted to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Using eyewitness testimony of family members and friends of victims, the lawsuits pointed to a number of specific massacres carried out by the government in the early 1980s. For example, on Dec. 5, 1982 in El Peten, 58 Special Forces troops killed 350 people, including women and children, over the course of three days, according to court documents. Forensic scientists who exhumed mass graves found that children were killed first, that women then were killed after being raped, and that the men were then summarily executed, they claimed.

If convicted, Rios Montt and Lucas Garcia could face up to 30 years in prison. Rights activists and the plaintiffs themselves, however, acknowledged that with most of the accused perpetrators enjoying high-ranking military or political offices, they would likely use their power to avoid prosecution.

"As long as Rios Montt is the president of the congress, these cases might not move forward," said Pedro Canil, spokesperson for the Association for Justice and Reconciliation, a two-year-old Guatemalan organization of victims and family members who have filed the cases.

Canil said he was forced into exile in Mexico in 1981, after a massacre in his village of Santa Maria Tzeja left most of his family dead.

He defended his organization's decision to file the lawsuits now, 20 years later. It was only after the peace agreement was signed in 1996, explained Canil, that indigenous communities saw the possibility to work toward holding government leaders accountable for their actions.

"The peace accord said that those who committed these crimes should be prosecuted, but they never were, so we decided to file our own lawsuits," he said. Similar lawsuits have been filed in Spain and with the Organization of American States.

Despite Rios Montt's hold on power and the reports of recent human rights abuses, Canil said he remained hopeful that these cases would continue to progress through the judicial system and eventually prove that the country was indeed in transition

"Until these people are punished, there can be no reconciliation," said Canil. "We cannot say that we are living in a real democracy, in real peace."