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Truth, Justice and Reconciliation in Guatemalaby Carol Amoruso, Hispanic Village Feature Writer
I covered the story a few years ago of the brutalization and sodomizing of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima by members of the New York Police Department. Facing permanent physical and emotional injuries, and with many of those around him calling for vengeance, Mr. Louima never cried for retribution, but only that the officers responsible be brought to justice under the law. At that time I'd spoken with the director of an international organization that services victims of personal or national holocausts. He told me that most victims of atrocities will not seek a crusade of equal or greater harm, but only justice. If justice were not done, however, victims would have a hard, hard time indeed, returning healthy to their society.
Memories of those experiences surfaced vividly on May 10 when I attended a conference to mark the opening of a photographic exhibit documenting the exhumations of the bodies of victims of the 35 year civil conflict in Guatemala. The exhibit and event, held at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, were mounted by the Historical Memory Project under the direction of Marcia Esparza, who teaches at the college. The Historical Memory Project was created to expose human rights abuses against indigenous peoples in Latin America. Justice!The words of Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Quiché Mayan activist for the rights of indigenous people, survivor of the war in Guatemala, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1992, brought me back to the Louima incident: "Our sorrow will not end until there is justice. Only justice will heal these wounds". Ms. Menchú was one of several internationally known presenters who used the occasion to revive attention to the unresolved issues facing Guatemalan society-- overwhelmingly indigenous, but voiceless--of impunity, truth and reconciliation following the conflict, officially ended in 1996. In the long years of warfare in which 90% of the victims were non-combatants, 600 massacres were carried out, often of entire Mayan villages, 200,000 individuals are dead or missing, and over 1,000,000 have been internally displaced. Exhumations
Screened in the background as Ms. Menchú and others spoke, were the photographs of the exhumations, of the families aggrieved, and the rituals of mourning the coming to light of the remains had finally allowed. It was clearly a difficult emotional setting, personally, and one could see, for many of the attendees. One of the photographers, Daniel Cearly, who carried out exhumations for the Catholic Church, began his presentation and, glancing over at his own images, found that he could not go on. Other testimony highly charged with emotion was given by Jennifer Harbury, a North American lawyer and activist who is attempting to seek justice for the murder of her indigenous husband during the fighting. Ms. Harbury's efforts have concentrated on convincing the courts in the Untied States to hear her case against the C.I.A., National Security Council and the State Department for complicity in her husband's and thousands of other deaths. Ms. Harbury vowed that if she failed to get a hearing in the U.S. courts, she will seek international judicial remedy.
90% of the killingsGuatemalan state forces are responsible for 90% of the killings, according to the report of the internationally-sponsored Guatemalan Truth Commission (Commission for Historical Clarification), which also cited the United States government with training the Guatemalan officer corps in counterinsurgency methods to be used against the indigenous. Many of these officers remain at liberty, with some holding powerful positions in government. With the numbers of indigenous deaths so startling, the human rights community generally questions that the war was one of peasant insurgency against the powerful and landed, maintaining instead that this was genocide. Supporting the claim was invitee, Spanish judge, Balthasar Garzón, who told the audience, "The case of genocide in Guatemala is most clear." Since 1992, international teams of forensic anthropologists have unearthed the remains from 200 clandestine cemeteries of 2,000 people missing and known dead, giving hope to individuals and the country for justice and reconciliation. The truth--the bringing forth of the remains, and now the material proof that great numbers were tortured----is a first, painful but critical step towards healing. For everyone, but for the indigenous especially, the exhumations dignify the dead, allowing them to be returned to sacred ground and to receive all the rites they deserve. Dr. Clyde Snow, a senior forensic anthropologist who set up the Guatemalan team as well as many others world-wide, explained that the investigations had gotten very close to important governmental officials, most specifically to former general and ruthless junta leader, Efrain Ríos Montt, now president of the Guatemalan congress. Several of the forensic specialists have recently had their lives and the lives of their families threatened, forcing them to leave their work and the country. Dr. Snow had earlier commented to the New York Times, "These people [making the threats] are probably more afraid of the dead than they are of the living." riddled with 25 bullets, a robbery?The conference was held just 3 days after the murder, in Guatemala City, of the accountant for the Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation, Guillermo de Leon. His body was riddled with 25 bullets in what the police described as a robbery, although it was known that Mr. de Leon was being surveilled before the killing and he'd returned home just hours before to hear funerary music on his phone answering machine. Random criminality seems to be a charge masking a premeditated and politically motivated assassination. In addition to Ms. Harbury, human rights activists are seeking to bring the issue of justice for the victims to the world judiciary. Judge Garzón gave legal standing to the necessity for an independent extra-national judicial body such as was convened to consider crimes against humanity in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. Calling it "incomprehensible", the jurist criticized the recent refusal of the United States to ratify the treaty setting up the World Tribunal which will hear cases of war crimes such as those the Guatemalan survivors are petitioning to redress. Only citizens of member nations can be indicted by the world court. The United States has been accused by others besides Ms. Harbury for playing a significant role in the killing, and thus the thorny issue of impunity arises once again. It was Garzón who had former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, imprisoned in England for crimes against his people. Currently, he is seeking to indict former U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, for his involvement with brutal military dictatorships in Latin America, such as that of Pinochet. Garzón concluded his remarks with an appeal: "Let's do what we can to assure this is not the century of impunity." HopeOne can only hope that the Historical Memory Project, Ms. Menchu's organization, good-minded religious organizations and individuals will succeed in their efforts in bringing truth and justice to this still traumatized, smoldering country. Their success will be a world-wide affirmation that living free with egregious sins on your hands is no longer a privilege. If justice is not done, the business at hand of uplifting the people as well as the healing of families, communities, ethnicities and the Guatemalan nation will never be achieved.
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