NEWS ARCHIVE
New report: The Persistence of Truth
04/03/2009 - Impunity Watch has launched a new report, "The Persistence of Truth", looking at progress in truth-seeking and the combat of impunity in Guatemala ten years after its UN-backed truth comission, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), published its findings on the events of the internal armed confrontation of 1960-96.The report, which was launched at the beginning of a three-day event surrounding the anniversary on 25 February, is currently available in Spanish. It 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.
This report was produced in partnership 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, with the aim of sparking renewed public interest in the CEH report and raising awareness of the lack of impact it has had on the authorities. The Dutch Platform against Impunity in Guatemala provided funding for the report.