Truthdiggers of the Week: Judges, Prosecutors of Efraín Ríos Montt [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

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.”

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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