NEWS ARCHIVE

New Impunity Watch report launched at seminar to commemorate Guatemalan truth commission

24/02/2009 - Impunity Watch is this week marking the tenth anniversary of the publication of "Memory of Silence", the seminal report on Guatemala’s internal armed confrontation produced by a UN-backed truth commission published on 25 February 1999, with the publication of new report, "The Persistence of Truth", and a three-day seminar in Guatemala City.

The Guatemalan state has yet to officially acknowledge the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) report, while impunity for the grave violations of human rights committed during more than three decades of internal conflict persists as strongly as ever. In view of the diminishing interest in achieving truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence, Impunity Watch and its partners in Guatemala felt this anniversary should be taken as an opportunity to return transitional justice to the top of the agenda.

Together with Convergencia para los derechos humanos, a coalition of six human rights organisations made up of Impunity Watch partners CALDH and ICCPG, and CIIDH, ODHAG, SEDEM and UDEFEDGUA, a report on the impact of the CEH findings has been made, with the aim of sparking renewed public interest in them and raising awareness of the lack of impact the report has had. The hope of Impunity Watch and the Convergencia is that public debate and social awareness about the CEH report’s content will help the population understand current issues and problems, and help put transitional justice and the importance of dealing with the past on the Guatemalan and international political agenda again. By launching the report on this important anniversary, during a high-profile seminar organised in cooperation with the government, it is also hoped that the latter can be pressed to formally accept the CEH’s findings and, thus, the state’s responsibility for the crimes it recounts.

The Dutch Platform against Impunity in Guatemala adopted this project, and provided funding for the report.

REPORT: THE PERSISTENCE OF TRUTH

This report, published in Spanish, consists of three chapters which approach the impact of the report from a different angle, each written by different authors selected for their professional specialisation. The fourth chapter contains conclusions and recommendations.

Chapter One:
The first chapter describes the debate prompted ten year ago by the findings of the CEH report on grave violations of international law during Guatemala’s internal armed confrontation, and the effects of this on the construction of historical memory. It contains qualitative research on the perceptions of diverse social and political actors in Guatemala, including state officials from 1999 and the present day, and from civil society and international cooperation agencies.

Chapter Two:
The second chapter examines the manner in which three of the largest national newspapers (prensa libre, Siglo XXI and La Hora) reported on the CEH report, as well as various themes related to the internal armed conflict, such as genocide and sexual violence. It features quantative research on reporting of specific events related to the CEH and other truth-seeking projects, as well as significant aspects of the internal armed confrontation and the debate over human rights violations. In addition, this study also includes the findings of qualitative research on the perceptions of the CEH among journalists from the capital city and those from the interior of the country.

Chapter Three:
The third study presents an analysis of progress and obstacles towards compliance with the recommendations of the CEH, both by the state and organised civil society. For this chapter, public policies were reviewed and previous evaluations of the implementation of the CEH recommendations taken into account, as were state and civil society initiatives which did not lead to the approval or implementation of such. In addition, those recommendations of the CEH that have received little or no follow-up, as, for example, the proposal to create a lustration and vetting commission for state institutions, are presented.

Conclusions & Recommendations:

Some of the main conclusions of this report are:

• that the Guatemalan state, but also the media and civil society, have not done enough to promote and disseminate the CEH report and encourage real public debate about its content and recommendations, and the implications of the conflict for society today. As a result, the report - in spite of the high expectations held by civil society in the wake of its launch – has not been able to contribute in a significant way to helping the country to face its past and assume responsibility for dealing with it in order to create a different, more inclusive and democratic society.
• that the areas in which the least progress has been made when it comes to implementing the recommendations of the report are justice, institutional reform (vetting and lustration), and the search for the disappeared. In addition, little progress has been made in the combat of racism. All this has helped todays society to retain the exclusionary and racist features of the past, and impunity and violence to run rampant, the latter as a consequence of not having held perpetrators to account, nor ‘cleansed’ state structures of them.
• that important sectors of society (elites, army) agreed to the creating of the CEH, not so much to launch and stimulate social debate on the past, learning its lessons and dealing with them, but rather as a mechanism to ‘draw a line’ under the past. This explains why so little has been done to disseminate the CEH findings since the publication of the report.
• that the report highlights the prevalence today of opposing and conflicting versions and interpretations of the past, with those in power seeing the conflict as a legitimate effort to combat communism and uphold the status quo, and victims and large portions of civil society seeing the state as having indiscriminately oppressed the population and prevented any political attempts to create a more just society.

Some of the main recommendations are:

• that the current goverment should use the historical opportunity of the tenth anniversary of the CEH report’s publication to formally accept it, once and for all, as the official document on the tragedy of Guatemala’s violent past, and insodoing acknowledge the state’s responsibility for the crimes it recounts, including genocide; it should also ensure its central inclusion in the curricula of all schools and educational centres.
• that new and creative ways should be found to promote social and public debate about the tragedies of the past, their causes and consequences, and the links they have with the prevalence of violence and impunity, as well as other features unchanged since the end of the confrontation, today.
• that state institutions created to deal with the combat of racism need to be strengthened, while social interventions to improve the socioeconomic, cultural and land-related conditions for the Mayan populations should be stepped up.

SEMINAR 24 – 27 FEBRUARY 2009:

In an attempt to have these recommendations taken up, Impunity Watch and the Convergencia decided to coordinate with state actors who were also planning activities to mark the anniversary of the CEH report. This led to the joint organisation of this week’s seminar and follow-up meetings around the country in the months to come.

Some partners disagreed with this approach, as they feel it undermines their protest against the failures of the state to tackle the crimes of the past.

Impunity Watch and the Convergencia respect and understand that position, and reaffirm their wholehearted support of the CEH report’s findings and the victims of the crimes it recounts, as well as their commitment to progress in facing the past and drawing lessons from it, not least the state’s full acknowledgement of its responsibilities for the grave violations of human rights committed during the armed confrontation.

In organising this three-day event with state actors, we seek to make our voices heard on these issues.

The state actors involved are the Programa Nacional de Resarcimiento, Secretaria de la Paz (Government Secretariat for Peace) and COPREDEH (Presidential Commission for Human Rights).

Activities include a three-day international seminar in Guatemala City, followed by several national seminars to be held throughout the country in areas affected by the conflictwar to disseminate the Impunity Watch/Convergencia report and the results of the international seminar. 

The state actors involved have concurrently organised a conscience-building campaign on television and radio, and various cultural activities, as well an official commemoration of the Day of the Victims and the CEH anniversary.

SEMINAR: SO AS NOT TO FORGET

24 FEBRUARY:
- inauguration by government Vice President Rafael Espada, Peace Secretary Orlando Blanco, the president of the reparations programme, Cesar Davila, a representative of the Convergencia, Jorge Santos, and a representative of the national movement of victims, Juana Tipaz.
- Panel: Presentation of the Impunity Watch/Convergencia report and reactions from two of the CEH’s commissioners.
- Panel: victims and victims organisations discuss the impact and importance of the CEH report and recommendations from the victims’ perspective

25 FEBRUARY:
As of last year, the day of the CEH report’s publication has become Victims’ Day. Each year, they are commemorated with a solemn act, this year combined with the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the report. We hope that President Avaro Colom will use this opportunity to acknowledge the report as the official account of the events of the internal armed conflict, and to acknowledge state responsibility for the crimes committed therein.

26 FEBRUARY:
- Panel: the impact of truth commissions, with the participation of an expert on Peru’s experiences in that regard
- Panel: sexual violence in armed conflicts
- Panel: truth-seeking processes and their relation to justice
- Theatre play: A Knot in the Throat – a play by a local Guatemalan group about the conflict and its consequences.

27 FEBRUARY:
- Panel: Truth commissions and psychosocial reparation
- Panel: preservation of memory (archives)
- Panel: searching for the disappeared
- Conclusions and closure of the seminar

 

Click here to see the seminar programme.