Truthdiggers of the Week: Judges, Prosecutors of Efraín Ríos Montt
Truthdiggers of the Week: Judges, Prosecutors of Efraín Ríos Montt
Posted on May 11, 2013
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The slaughter killed more than 1,700 people in Guatemala’s Mayan region after Montt seized power in 1982. Speaking on “Democracy Now!” on Friday, investigative journalist Allan Nairn, who has been attending the Montt trial, said the total death toll from the civil war, which began in 1960 and ended in 1996, amounted to something like a quarter million.
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Nairn reports that the killings were no secret. “They were acts of state terrorism where a big part of the point was publicity,” he told “Democracy Now!” “When the assassinations were done in the cities, they would often make a point of throwing the bodies in the streets to terrify onlookers. In the massacres in the countryside, the executions would—and torture interrogations would often be carried out in the village square with all the survivors looking on so they would get a lifelong lesson that they would never forget, as they saw their families and their loved ones being strangled and shot in the head.”
It was during these events that Reagan told the world that Montt was a man of integrity who was devoted to democracy. Against accusations of murder, Montt would respond: “It’s not that we have a policy of scorched earth, just a policy of scorched communists.”
~snip~
For giving oppressed people everywhere a sense that they are not entirely alone in their struggle against their rulers, and for providing the world an example worth following, we honor the judges and prosecutors of Efrain Ríos Montt as our Truthdiggers of the Week.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdiggers_of_the_week_judges_prosecutors_of_efrain_rios_montt_20130511/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Truthdig%2FReports+Truthdig+%7C+Reports
= new reply since forum marked as read
Here's one more judge who deserves a lot of recognition
Dr. Claudia Paz y Paz
Claudia Paz y Paz, Attorney General, Guatemala
Since assuming office in 2010, she has worked hard to bring justice to notorious organized crime bosses, human rights abusers and perpetrators of widespread gender-based violence. In a country confronting serious challenges to the rule of law, she has significantly increased the number of prosecutions and convictions.
Judge Jazmín Barrios is also the same judge who sentenced an Army Colonel, his Army Captain son and a prelate for the 1998 murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi, who was assassinated two days after he released his report on human rights violations during the civil war. His report named many names of the criminals involved.
She also is the one who sentenced four former members of the Army's counterinsurgency elite unit, the Kaibils (Perez Molina is also a Kaibil) to 6,060 years in prison for slaughtering several hundred innocent Mayans
Most information taken from http://www.prensalibre.com/noticias/justicia/Jazmin-Barrios-condeno-Rios-Montt_0_917308431.html
Back in the 1980s, Rios Montt received tons of favorable coverage (and money) from American televangelists Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Falwell, because the Guatemalan dictator was a Pentacostal Protestant who loved to caterwaul about how much he loved Jesus, even as his soldiers raped and slaughtered indiscriminately. I suspect, but cannot prove, that American intelligence used these fundamentalist churches as "cover" for sending funds to the Guatemalan regime.
Rios Montt belonged to a California-based ministry called Verbo, or the Church of the Word, a subsidiary of a larger organization called Gospel Outreach. Over the years, many a spook-watcher has suggested that this missionary group his provided cover for a Certain Interesting Agency. (See, for example, this website.) In many ways, the Agency made a tactical error when it allowed this man to lead a coup in a traditionally Catholic country, because his fervent Protestant evangelism alienated most Guatemalans. Even members of the conservative elite who might otherwise have supported the right came to despise Rios Montt...
"Rios Montt is a dictator who came in with all these promises, and yet, what did he do?" Goldman says. "He abolished all press freedom. There's less press freedom now in Guatemala than there has been for the last 30 years. No political parties are allowed. No union activity. Search and seizure without warrants are conducted. A three-man military tribunal can sentence anybody to anything, including death."
Here's a chilling thought: Much of that description now applies to our own country. Unions have been largely crushed. The feds need no warrant to scoop up your emails and cell phone calls. Most of the press will soon be owned by Murdoch and the Kochs. Anyone declared an "enemy combatant" can be blasted to atoms by a killer drone, without trial...
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-christian-mass-murderer.html
Shocking that none of the right-wing apologists in this 'group' have come to condemn Montt and Reagan.
