NEWS ARCHIVE

Guatemala: IW applauds president’s genocide apology but warns of continued obstruction of transitional justice

26/02/2009 - On 25 February 2009, in a brave and historic gesture, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom apologised to the victims of the genocide perpetrated against the country’s indigenous Mayan people between 1960 and 1996. Other institutions, however, remain reluctant to support moves to come to terms with the past, as seen in recent attempts by the military to block progress in a genocide case that has been pending before the Guatemalan courts since 2000.

President Colom’s announcement, the first clear admission of state responsibility for genocide by a Guatemalan president, was made at a ceremony marking the tenth anniversary of the report by the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) which established that the crime had taken place. In “Memory of Silence”, the country’s UN-backed truth-commission found that the military was responsible for the deaths or forced disappearances of around 200,000 people and 669 massacres, mainly in indigenous villages.

Previously, the state, though providing compensation to thousands of victims and funding exhumations of massacre sites, had fallen short of acknowledging the CEH’s findings. Observers see this as a result of the continued dominance of strong right-wing currents and perpetrators of the crimes in question. In this regard, no high-ranking officials have yet been brought to justice, while less than five cases of serious human rights violations have resulted in convictions in a Guatemalan court, and even then only of low-ranking officers.
 
This latest move by President Colom, a reform-minded politician who was elected in late 2007, therefore marks a milestone in Guatemala’s recovery from its long and bloody armed confrontation. Significantly, it was accompanied by a further announcement that the military was to hand over four anti-insurgent plans from 1978-1983, the darkest period of the internal conflict, to the public prosecutor, as ordered by the Constitutional Court. These documents are believed to provide crucial evidence in the genocide case against, among others, former army general and president, Efrain Rios Mont, filed in 2000 by the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR), a victims’ organisation, with the support of Impunity Watch partner CALDH.
 
However, the military openly resisted these orders from both the president and the Constitutional Court by handing over only two of the four plans ordered, Plan Victoria 82 and Plan Firmeza 83, stating that the remaining documents - Ixil and Sofia - which are believed to contain important evidence to demonstrate responsibility of the military high command, including Rios Mont, did not exist. In a further blow, the judge who received the documents, Abraham Valenzuela, handed them straight back to the military, scheduling a meeting at the army’s headquarters on 6 March to review the plans and establish whether they should be incorporated as evidence in the genocide case and if they should remain classified.
 
Impunity Watch, together with members of the Dutch Guatemala Platform Against Impunity, the Dutch and Swedish ambassadors to Guatemala and a US embassy representative, accompanied the AJR president, lawyer and CALDH to witness this court session. There, Judge Valenzuela ruled that the Public Prosecutor’s Office should launch an investigation to locate the two missing plans and establish criminal responsibility for their for disappearance, while the existing plans, described by him as of “historic importance” to the country, should be incorporated into the case file and thus made available to both parties, with the caveat that they should not be made public or revealed to any other party.

As this sessions was being held, the Minister of Defence appeared in person at the Public Prosecutor's Office to file charges for the loss of the two missing military plans.

AJR and CALDH consider the decision of the judge to incorporate the two military plans, as well as to start a criminal investigation into the loss of the other two plans, to be a positive step and are hopeful that with the obtainment of at least two military plans the stalled case can move forward again. However, it is important to emphasise that the two most important plans are still missing, and that the military archives have still not been handed over to the president to enable public access, despite the clear request of the president and ruling of the Constitutional Court to that effect.

Moreover, the obvious inconsistency between the president’s stance and that of other state institutions is of great concern. The willingness of certain interest groups, in this case particularly within the military, to do anything in their power to restrict progress in dealing with past crimes, points to the fragility of the positive trend initiated by President Colom.

Impunity Watch therefore urges all state, non-governmental and international organisations in Guatemala to maintain pressure in relation to this case, and draws their attention to the safety risks facing the justice operators dealing with it and similar investigations, as pointed out by Judge Valenzuela himself during  the court session of the 6 March. In addition, we refer these parties to the Impunity Watch report published on 2 December 2008, which contains comprehensive recommendations on how they can help to overcome the obstacles to dealing with impunity in Guatemala.
 
Impunity Watch Guatemala reports:
 Recognising the Past: Challenges in the Combat of Impunity in Guatemala
The Persistence of Truth