Dramatic Testimony Marks Start Of Guatemalan Genocide Trial

[Coyotl]

Source: npr.org

The genocide trial of former U.S.-backed Guatemalan General Ephraim Rios Montt began Tuesday. The charges stem from the bloody civil war which lasted for more than three decades. More than 200,000 people died or went missing.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/2013/03/20/174812888/dramatic-testimony-marks-start-of-guatemalan-genocide-trial

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Listen to the Story, 4 min 46 sec, NPR
http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2013/03/20130320_me_02.mp3

[WinkyDink]

1. Pat Robertson must be sad for his good friend:

By the 1980s, Pat Robertson’s program "The 700 Club," reached 3.1 million viewers in Guatemala. Robertson took a personal interest in the strife torn Central American nation, developing warm ties to General Efrain Rios Montt, a born again evangelical Christian. When Rios Montt took power in a military coup d’etat in March of 1982, Robertson immediately flew to Guatemala, meeting with the incoming president a scant five days after he came to power. Later, Robertson aired an interview with Rios Montt on "The 700 Club" and extolled the new military government.

Robertson’s visit came at a particularly sensitive time. Guatemala’s dirt poor indigenous peoples, who made up half the country’s population, were suffering greatly at the hands of the U.S. funded military. The armed forces had taken over Indian lands that seemed fertile for cattle exporting or a promising site to drill for oil. Those Indians who dared to resist were massacred. Rios Montt, a staunch anti-Communist supported by U.S. president Reagan, was determined to wipe out the Marxist URNG, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union rebels. However, according to Amnesty International, thousands of people with no connection to the armed struggle were killed by the regime
http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/09/17/rev-pat-robertson-and-gen-rios-montt/

[Peace Patriot]

2. Rec x 1,000! Lest we forget!

n/t

[School Teacher]

3. I Went on Three Human Rights Delegations to Guatemala

I have been privileged to visit human rights organizations in Guatemala three times. I have seen the skeletons of victims laid out at the Center for Forensic Anthropology. I have talked with survivors and seen centers where evidence is gathered, recorded and protected,
talked with journalists and govt. officials.

Many brave people in Guatemala have been standing up for years clambering for justice at great risk to themselves. The scale of these massacres is staggering. All around the US in the 80's people in churches and organizations worked hard to force our govt. to withdraw military aid to Guatemala. Thank you, people.

I never thought I would live to see the day when General Rios Montt would be in court charged with genocide. You can thank the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and many other human rights organizations that brought us to this bright, shinning day.