Forgotten victims get a hearing - Guatemala

[seemslikeadream]

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It was 6am on March 13, 1982, when soldiers and civil patrollers entered the community of Rio Negro in Guatemala. Instead of searching for suspected guerrillas, the soldiers rounded up the women and children and forced them to walk for a gruelling two hours up into the hills. An hour or so later, 70 women and 107 children had been hacked to death with machetes. They included Jesús’ three brothers, his sister Juana and her two little children.

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NO-ONE has ever been held responsible for planning and carrying out the massacres. After representations from survivors of the massacres, a small human rights organisation, Centro de Accion Legal de Derechos Humanos (Centre for Legal Action on Human Rights) CALDH, decided to bring a case against the two former dictators and their High Commands in the Guatemalan courts. In May 2000, they began to research communities where massacres had taken place and approached people to see whether they would be willing to come forward as witnesses. All in all, a total of 100 brave Mayan people came forward to give their testimony

When you study the way in which the massacres were carried out, what is remarkable is the similarity of technique. The massacres of Petanac and Plan de Sanchez were carried out within two days of each other in July 1982. In both massacres soldiers and members of the paramilitary civil patrol surrounded the village. Men, women and children were all separated from each other. The young girls were taken away and raped and then strangled. The men were put in one house, the women in another and the children in yet another. These houses were set on fire and anyone who escaped from the house was gunned down. Grenades were thrown inside the houses to make sure that everyone inside was dead. These attacks were planned centrally and carried out to a blueprint, and this is one of the key planks of the case against Rios Montt and Lucas Garcia.

Jesús Tecu, and the lawyers and campaigners in CALDH are just a few of the human rights defenders in Guatemala who face daily intimidation because of their determination to bring the perpetrators of the massacres to justice. Come and hear his remarkable story on Thursday at the Augustine United Church Centre, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, at 6pm.

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http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=281352005

[Frances]

1. 1982

Ronald Reagan was president.

Reagan (a Republican) defeated Jimmy Carter (a Democrat) in 1980. Would Carter have backed such a repressive regime the way the Reagan crowd did? I don't think so.

[bemildred]

2. Kick. nt