Guatemalan court strikes down amnesty claim by ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt in genocide case

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Guatemalan court strikes down amnesty claim by ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt in genocide case
Article by: Associated Press
Updated: March 13, 2013 - 8:25 PM

GUATEMALA CITY - A court has denied an amnesty for a former U.S.-backed dictator who presided over one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala's civil war, allowing his trial to continue.

The Center of Legal Action in Human Rights, which is a plaintiff in the case, says the court informed it of its decision on Jose Efrain Rios Montt's appeal on Wednesday.

This is the fourth time the courts have denied Rios Montt an amnesty. His lawyers have sought to block the trial, arguing that he is protected by an amnesty law.

Rios Montt, 86, is facing trial on charges he ordered the murder, torture and displacement of thousands of Mayan Indians.

During the 1960-96 civil war, more than 200,000 people were killed or went missing, according to the United Nations.


Read more: http://www.startribune.com/world/197898521.html

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(Short article, no more at link.)

[Judi Lynn]

1. Reagan’s Hand in Guatemala’s Genocide

Reagan’s Hand in Guatemala’s Genocide
January 23, 2012

Exclusive: Guatemala has begun a politically difficult process to make human rights violators of the 1980s accountable for their crimes, including genocide inflicted on Indian villages, but the United States still heaps praise on the killers’ chief American accomplice, Ronald Reagan, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Guatemala is taking steps to hold an ex-dictator accountable for genocide committed against Maya-Ixil Indians in the 1980s, even as the United States continues to honor the American president — Ronald Reagan — who helped make that genocide possible.

A Guatemalan judge orderedEfraín Ríos Montt to appear in court on Thursday in what could be the start of a process for trying the former military dictator on genocide charges for authorizing scorched-earth campaigns against Maya-Ixil villages suspected of sympathizing with leftist guerrillas.

In the late 1990s, a United Nations truth commission investigated the slaughters, which involved the killing of men, women and children, and labeled the massacres carried out during Ríos Montt’s 17-month reign in 1982 and 1983 as “genocide.” Two of Ríos Montt’s generals were arrested on war crimes and genocide charges last year.

However, while Guatemala, though beset by many serious problems including widespread poverty, takes politically difficult steps to impose some accountability on these war criminals, the U.S. politician most associated with Ríos Montt and his genocide, remains the subject of endless adoration.

More:
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/23/reagans-hand-in-guatemalas-genocide/

[Judi Lynn]

2. Reagan Revisionism

Reagan Revisionism

Backing off Bush, media recall a crush-worthy conservative

By Peter Hart
Apr 01 2007

Like many prominent pundits, Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria has of late expressed his frustration with the foreign policy of George W. Bush. In the magazine’s March 19 issue, Zakaria lamented that the Bush administration “began intervening directly in the domestic affairs” of Latin American countries, a move he presented as a break from the recent past: “American foreign policy toward Latin America had been on the right track for two decades. Ronald Reagan orchestrated an extraordinary turnaround, supporting human rights, democracy and free trade in several countries.”

Zakaria can be given partial credit on one point: Reagan did push on Latin America a set of policies that are referred to as “free trade,” though these policies include increased restrictions on trade in the form of tightened patent and copyright laws. The current leftward trend in the region’s politics seems in large part due to a pushback against those types of economic plans.

Celebrating Ronald Reagan’s stance on human rights and democracy in the region is another matter. Zakaria’s assessment is completely at odds with the actual policies of the Reagan administration—as illustrated by Secretary of State Alexander Haig’s declaration that “international terrorism will take the place of human rights in our concern because it is the ultimate abuse of human rights” (Time, 2/9/81), and U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick’s urging the embrace of “authoritarian” states on the grounds that they were preferable to “totalitarian” ones (Commentary, 11/79).

Totalitarian or not, the regimes Reagan and Co. embraced managed to rack up substantial body counts: The Argentine generals killed approximately 30,000, El Salvador’s death squads murdered some 75,000 and an estimated 200,000 Guatemalans were exterminated by a succession of dictators—including Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, whom Reagan proclaimed had gotten a “bum rap.”

More:
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/reagan-revisionism/

[mpcamb]

3. Efraín Ríos Montt

Last edited Thu Mar 14, 2013, 09:32 AM - Edit history (1)

Jail him.

[Coyotl]

4. If genocide cannot be prosecuted, how do we stop it?

The Native Americans in Guatemala need a few decades of peace just to recover from this, yet another atrocity of history brought upon them by the invaders..

[Solly Mack]

5. k/r

[Comrade Grumpy]

6. It's decades past time for Rios Montt to meet justice.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Rios Montt Trial is Reason to Celebrate at AGM! (Amnesty International)

Rios Montt Trial is Reason to Celebrate at AGM!
By Larry Ladutke
March 19, 2013 at 3:41 PM

Tuesday, March 19 marks the beginning of the trial of former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Rios Montt for the deaths of 1,771 individuals and the forced displacement of tens of thousands more from the Ixil triangle region of southern Quiché department.

It is important to remember that the crimes covered in this trial are only a fraction of the widespread, systematic human rights abuses that the Guatemalan military committed under Rios Montt’s brief reign in 1982 and 1983. The military massacred or disappeared tens of thousands of Guatemalan civilians in the months following the coup that brought Rios Montt to power. Furthermore, the Commission on Historical Clarification (CEH) blamed the Guatemalan government for acts of genocide because:

“Between 1981 and 1983, the Army identified groups of the Mayan population as the internal enemy, considering them to be an actual or potential support base for the guerrillas….the Army…defined a concept of internal enemy that went beyond guerrilla sympathizers, combatants or militants to include civilians from specific ethnic groups….the reiteration of destructive acts, directed systematically against groups of the Mayan population, within which can be mentioned the elimination of leaders and criminal acts against minors who could not possibly have been military targets, demonstrates that the only common denominator for all the victims was the fact that they belonged to a specific ethnic group and makes it evident that these acts were committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part” these groups.”

This trial offers hope to all the families of tens of thousands Guatemalans killed by Rios Montt’s forces. They have waited 30 years, knowing that Rios Montt could die before ever facing justice – like Augusto Pinochet (Chile), Roberto D’Aubuisson (El Salvador), and Rene Emilio Ponce (El Salvador). Now, he is closer to joining Alberto Fujimori (Peru) and Jorge Rafael Videla (Argentina) on the growing list of convicted human rights abusers.

More:
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/americas/rios-montt-trial-is-reason-to-celebrate-at-agm/

[Judi Lynn]

8. Mary Sanchez: A Guatemalan tyrant, in old age, faces justice at last

Mary Sanchez: A Guatemalan tyrant, in old age, faces justice at last
Published: March 29, 2013 Updated 14 hours ago

By MARY SANCHEZ — The Kansas City Star

In a courtroom in Guatemala City, a gray-haired man sits passively through the trial of the century for the Central American country.

At 86, the former dictator Gen. Efrain Rios Montt has escaped this criminal scrutiny for decades. Now, along with another notorious general, Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, he stands accused of genocide and crimes against humanity. Specifically, of orchestrating the murder of nearly 1,800 indigenous people and the forced displacement of 29,000 more. The tallies are an astounding amount of suffering for his 17-month reign in the early 1980s.

Since mid-March, dozens of Ixil people, indigenous Mayans, have taken the witness stand to describe the Guatemalan military's campaign of extermination against them. They tell of watching families burned alive as their homes were torched, of beheadings and body parts thrown into rivers. Women were raped before being shot to death, and toddlers were hacked up with machetes.

Most North Americans are unaware of the trial, and of the man at the center of it. Sadly, that's not surprising. Most of us were oblivious when the atrocities occurred. And we remain unmoved by the fact that U.S. military shipments helped Rios Montt inflict his scored earth campaign.

More:
http://www.islandpacket.com/2013/03/29/2441757/mary-sanchez-a-guatemalan-tyrant.html#storylink=cpy

[Judi Lynn]

9. Faces covered, rape victims testify at trial of Guatemala’s former military strongman

Faces covered, rape victims testify at trial of Guatemala’s former military strongman
By Associated Press

GUATEMALA CITY — Indigenous women were systematically gang-raped by Guatemala soldiers and members of paramilitary groups during the country’s 36-year civil war, victims testified Tuesday at the trial of the country’s U.S.-backed strongman.

With their faces covered, the witnesses spoke in their native Ixil language on the eighth day of testimony in the trial of former Gen. Jose Efrain Rios Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. The court asked the media not to reveal their names or publish any other identifying information.

One woman testified that she had found four men raping her daughter.

“When they saw me they fled,” she said. “They were soldiers.”

The women’s rights group “We Women” sang and held flowers outside the court in support of the witnesses.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/rape-victims-testify-at-trial-of-guatemalas-former-military-strongman/2013/04/02/56c9dce4-9bdf-11e2-9219-51eb8387e8f1_story.html