A Formal Legal Mandate for a Criminal Investigation of Guatemala's Current President

[Catherina]

Saturday, May 11, 2013

A Formal Legal Mandate for a Criminal Investigation of Guatemala's Current President, Perez Molina

General Efrain Rios Montt has been found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has already begun his "irrevocable" sentence of 80 years in prison.

The court that convicted Rios Montt has also ordered the attorney general to launch an immediate investigation of "all others" connected to the crimes.

This important and unexpected aspect of the verdict means that there now exists a formal legal mandate for a criminal investigation of the President of Guatemala, General Otto Perez Molina.

As President, Perez Molina enjoys temporary legal immunity, but that immunity does not block the prosecutors from starting their investigation.

Last night, in a live post-verdict interview on CNN Espanol TV, Perez Molina was confronted about his own role during the Rios Montt massacres.

The interviewer, Fernando del Rincon, repeatedly asked Perez Molina about his filmed interviews with me when he was Rios Montt's Ixil field commander.

At that time, Perez Molina, operating under the alias "Major Tito Arias," commanded troops who described to me how, under orders, they killed civilians.

At first, Perez Molina refused to answer, then CNN's satellite link to him was cut off, then, after it was restored minutes later, Perez Molina replied that women, children and "complete families" had in fact aided guerrillas.

Offering what appears to be a rationale for killing families may not be a sufficient defense. But that is up to Perez Molina.

He too deserves his day in court.


Allan Nairn

http://www.allannairn.org/2013/05/a-formal-legal-mandate-for-criminal.html

Permission granted to post in full

"his filmed"

"interviews"

"with me"

Thursday, May 9, 2013
The Guatemala Genocide Case: Testimony Notes Regarding Rios Montt

By Allan Nairn


The case against General Rios Montt has included vast amounts of evidence.

My notes for my own scheduled testimony (for what happened see post of April 18) included the following observations:

When Rios Montt seized power on March 23, 1982, he immediately seized control of and transformed army operations.

He cut back on the urban assassinations, which had become counterproductive, and increased the massacres of the rural Mayans, the army's main "internal enemy."

He took a sweep tactic that had been pioneered by General Benedicto Lucas Garcia and made it a systematic strategy, applied across the Northwest Highlands.

A CIA report observed of Benedicto's -- later Rios Montt's -- method: "In mid-February 1982 the Guatemalan army reinforced its existing force in the central El Quiche department and launched a sweep operation into the Ixil triangle. The commanding officers of the units involved have been instructed to destroy all towns and villages which are cooperating with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) and eliminate all sources of resistance. Civilians in the area who agree to collaborate with the army and who seek army protection are to be well treated and cared for in refugee camps for the duratiion of the operation."

In practice, the civilians in the camps were often survivors of army massacres who were subject to vast coercion including execution, torture, rape, forced labor, and forced service in the "civil patrols."

Colonel George Maynes, the US military attache in Guatemala, told me that he and Benedicto Lucas had developed this sweep tactic and that Rios Montt had expanded it.

A US Green Beret, Captain Jesse Garcia showed me how, under Rios Montt, he was training Guatemalan troops in the techniques of how to "destroy towns." (Allan Nairn, "Despite Ban, U.S. Captain Trains Guatemalan Military," Washington Post, October 21, 1982, page 1).

The Guatemalan Catholic Bishops Conference reported in a May 27, 1982 pastoral letter: "Numerous families have perished, vilely murdered. Not even the lives of the elderly, pregnant women or innocent children have been respected ... Never in our history has it come to such grave extremes. These assassinations fall into the category of genocide."

In an interview in the palace that May I asked Rios Montt about killing civilians. He said: "Look, the problem of the war is not just a question of who is shooting. For each one who is shooting there are ten who are working behind him."

Rios Montt's senior aide and spokesman, Francisco Bianchi, who was sitting next to him, amplified: "The guerrillas won over many Indian collaborators. Therefore, the Indians were subversives, right? And how do you fight subversion? Clearly you had to kill Indians because they were collaborating with subversion. And then they would say, 'You're massacring innocent people.' But they weren't innocent. They had sold out to subversion." (Allan Nairn, "Guatemala Can't Take 2 Roads," The New York Times, op ed, July 20, 1982).

I visited the Ixil zone in September, 1982, arriving first in Nebaj. The towns and much of the Ixil area were under army occupation.

A foreign health worker said 80% of the people were malnourished. Many were dying of hunger, measles, and tuberculosis.

Rios Montt's senior commander on scene was a man who called himself Major Tito Arias, but who was actually Otto Perez Molina, the current president of Guatemala.

Subordinates of Rios Montt and Perez Molina described how they tortured and killed civilians. The soldiers and officers described a strategy that centered on emptying and massacring entire villages.

They said they would kill a quarter to a third of the people, place a quarter to a third of them in camps, and the rest would flee to the mountains where, if the army found them, they would shoot them on sight.

The soldiers said they were still in the midst of intensive sweep operations.

They also said they were under a strict chain of command that placed only three layers of responsibility between themselves and Rios Montt. In the words of Lieutenant Romeo Sierra at La Perla they were "on a very short leash."

A number of soldiers named specific towns and villages in which they had committed massacres.

One, a corporal named Felipe, in Nebaj, listed Salquil, Sumal Chiquito, Sumal Grande and Acul.

His account was consistent with that of a man from Acul who spoke in secret and described an April massacre in which he said the army shot 24 civilians. He said the soldiers shot them in the head after sorting villagers into two groups, one of which the soldiers said they would "send to Glory" and the other "to Hell." He said: "They said that they were executing the law of Rios Montt."

The descriptions of the massacre strategy from soldiers and civilian survivors were consistent. They also meshed with accounts that I heard elsewhere in the Mayan zones.

(Much of the following text is drawn from Allan Nairn, "The Guns of Guatemala: The merciless mission of Rios Montt's army," The New Republic, April 11, 1983, and from my work in the 1983 documentary film "Skoop!" also known as "Deadline Guatemala" and "Titular de Hoy," done with Jean-Marie Simon and directed by Mikael Wahlforss, EPIDEM Scandinavian TV):

Just outside Nebaj, more than 2,500 campesinos had been resettled on an army airstrip. "They didn't want to leave voluntarily," explained Corporal Felipe, who manned a .50 caliber machine gun in the Nebaj church belfry. "The government put out a call that they would have one month to turn themselves in," he said, referring to a nationwide order from Rios Montt. "So now the army is in charge of going to get all the people from all these villages."

Sergeant Miguel Raimundo, who was guarding a group of 161 suspected guerrilla collaborators (which included 79 children and 42 women), said, "The problem is that almost all the village people are guerrillas." According to camp records, they had been rounded up in sweeps through the villages of Vijolom, Salquil Grande, Tjolom, Parramos Chiquito, Paob, Vixaj, Quejchip, and Xepium.

Sergeant Jose Angel, who commanded a La Perla platoon explained:"Before we get to the village, we talk with the soldiers about what they should do and what they shouldn't do. They all discuss it so they have it in their minds. We coordinate it first—we ask, what is our mission?"

Lieutenant Sierra had noted that the sweep commanders had hourly radio contact with headquarters. He said the superior officer "knows everything. Everything is controlled." All field actions had to be reported in the commanders' daily "diary of operations" which was reviewed and criticized in monthly face-to-face evaluations.

Sergeant Jose Angel explained the village-entry procedure: "One patrol enters the village from one point, on another side another patrols enters. We go in before dawn, because everyone is sleeping. If we come in broad daylight they get scared, they see it's the army, and they run because they know the army is coming to get them,"

Rios Montt's army had a clear policy about the meaning and consequences of such behavior. "The people who are doing things outside the law run away," sergeant Jose Angel said. "But the people who aren't doing anything, they stay." He said he had seen cases where "lots of them ran, most of a village. They ran because they knew the army was coming."

Sergeant Miguel Raimundo cited three cases where villages fled en masse. "All the villages around here, like Salquil, Paob, or here in Sumal, they have a horn and there's a villager who watches the road. If the soldiers come, he blows the horn. It's a signal. They all go running."

The soldiers explained that they routinely killed these fleeing, unarmed civilians.

I asked Corporal Felipe how the villagers react when the troops arrive.

"They flee from their homes. They run for the mountain."

"And what do you do?"

"Some we capture alive and others we can't capture alive. When they run and go into the mountains that obligates one to kill them."

"Why?"

"Because they might be guerrillas. If they don't run, the army is not going to kill them. It will protect them."

"Among those you have to kill, what kind of people are they? Are they men or women?"

"At times men, at times women."

"In which villages has this happened?"

"Oh, it's happened in lots of them. In Acul, Salquil, Sumal Chiquito, Sumal Grande."

"In those villages, about how many people did you kill?"

"Not many, a few."

"More than ten? More than twenty? More than a hundred?"

"Oh no, about twenty."

"In each village?"

"Yes, of course. It's not many. More than that were captured alive."

Sergeant Jose Angel recalled a similar experience in the village of Chumansan in the province of Quezaltenango. "When we went in, the people scattered," he said. "We had no choice but to shoot at them. We killed some. . . . Oh, about ten, no more. Most of them got away."

After tracking and shooting the unarmed civilians who fled in fear, the army dealt with the unarmed civilians who remained in the village.

First, Sergeant Jose Angel explained, "We go into a village and take the people out of their houses and search the houses."

Among the items the soldiers looked for were suspiciously large stocks of grain or beans. The army took what it could use and burned the rest.

Next, he said, "You ask informers who are the ones that are doing things, things outside the law. And that's when you round up the collaborators. And the collaborators—you question them, interrogate them, get them to speak the truth. Who have they been talking to? Who are the ones who have been coming to the village to speak with them?"

The soldiers often went in with target lists of "collaborators." The lists were provided by G-2, the military intelligence service headed at that time by General Rios Montt's co-defendant, General Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez.

The interrogations were generally conducted in the village square with the population looking on.

I asked Jose Angel how he questioned people. He replied, "Beat them to make them tell the truth, hurt them."

"With what methods?"

"This one, like this," he said as he wrapped his hands around his neck and made a choking sound. "More or less hanging them."

"With what?"

"With a lasso. Each soldier has his lasso."

The day before, in Nebaj, an infantryman who was standing over the bodies of four captured guerrillas demonstrated the interrogation technique he had learned in "Cobra," an army counterinsurgency course for field troops. (Another soldier said the guerrillas, who had set off a grenade, had been "presented" to Perez Molina for interrogation, "But they still didn't say anything, for better or for worse.&quot

"Tie them like this," he said, "tie the hands behind, run the cord here (around the neck) and press with a boot (on the chest). Knot it, and make a tourniquet with a stick, and when they're dying you give it another twist and you ask them again, and if they still don't want to answer you do it again until they talk."

The sergeants and infantrymen of Nebaj and La Perla said the tourniquet was the most common interrogation technique. They said that live burial and mutilation by machete were also used.

The soldiers said they expected those they questioned to provide specific information, such as the names of villagers who had talked with or given food to guerrillas. Failure to do so implied guilt, and brought immediate judgment and action.

"Almost everyone in the villages is a collaborator," said Sergeant Miguel Raimundo. "They don't say anything. They would rather die than talk"

When I asked Miguel Raimundo about the interrogation method, he replied: "We say, if you tell us where the guerrillas are, the army won't kill you. . . . If they collaborate with the army, we don't do anything."

"And if they don't say anything?"

"Well, then they say, 'if you kill me, kill me—because I don't know anything,' and we know they're guerrillas. They prefer to die rather than say where the companeros are."

According to Sergeant Jose Angel, it was common for suspected collaborators to be pointed out, questioned, and executed all on the same day.

Explaining how he extracted information so quickly, he said, "Well, they don't talk like that voluntarily. You just have to subdue them a little to make them speak the truth."

After the interrogations had been completed, the patrol leader would make a speech to the survivors gathered in the village square.

"We tell the people to change the road they are on, because the road they are on is bad," said Jose Angel. "If they don't change, there is nothing else to do but kill them."

"So you kill them on the spot?"

"Yes, sure. If they don't want the good, there's nothing more to do but bomb their houses."

Jose Angel said that in Solola and Quezaltenengo he had participated in operations of this kind in which more than 500 people were killed

He and other soldiers said that smaller villages were destroyed with Spanish, Israeli, and U.S.-made grenades. Boxes of these grenades could be seen stacked in the Nebaj ammunition dump.

The soldiers said they also used a 3.5-inch U.S.- made shoulder-held recoilless rocket that was designed as an antitank weapon but is effective against people and straw huts. At the La Perla headquarters, one such launcher was sitting next to boxes of "explosive projectile" rockets from the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant.

For larger operations, Jose Angel said, patrols called in army planes and helicopters to bomb the villages. The helicopters were U.S.-manufactured Hueys and Jet Rangers. The bombs included U.S.-made 50-kilogram Ml/61As, twelve of which were stacked in the base munitions dump in Nebaj.

Lieutenant Cesar Bonilla, the officer in charge of the Nebaj airstrip resettlement camp said the helicopters were especially useful for catching villagers by surprise.

"When you go in on foot they see the patrol three kilometers away and know you're coming. But with air transport, you land different units in the area, all the units close in rapidly, and the people can't go running away."

Bonilla said that this type of operation could only be executed by several helicopters at once. "With just one helicopter you scare them away and there's no control."

The United States Congress' temporary refusal to sell spare parts had grounded much of the fleet, so Lieutenant Bonilla was encouraged by reports that the Reagan Administration was considering changing the policy.

"That would be wonderful," he said. "With six helicopters, for example, the airborne troops would land all at once before they could make a move. The nicest, the ideal, the dream, would be a surprise: suddenly, pow! Helicopters with troops!" As he spoke, he made machine-gun noises and waved his Israeli Galil rifle toward the refugee shacks. "Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta! All at once from the air! Pow! No escape routes. That would be ideal."

The day before this conversation, a family in Bonilla's camp -- interviewed in their shack outside the view of soldiers -- described such an assault on their village. "Two times they came there in helicopters," said one of the men. "They would come in and land and the people would retire and they would always kill a few. They flew over, machine-gunning people from the helicopter." The family said that five were killed in the strafing.

After the torture, the executions, and the burning, strafing and bombing, the next stage of the sweep was to chase the fleeing people through the hills.

"Up here there aren't any villages anymore," said Sergeant Jose Angel, speaking of the patrol areas around La Perla. "There used to be, but then the soldiers came. We knew that such and such a village was involved, so we went to get them. We captured some and the rest of the people from the village ran away. They're hiding in the mountains. Now we're going to the mountains to look for them."

Major Tito -- Otto Perez Molina -- the commander of the Nebaj base, said in mid-September that 2,000 people from the area of Sumal Grande had fled to the mountains and would be pursued by foot patrols and helicopters.

Sergeant Jose Angel said his platoon went on such operations frequently. I asked Jose Angel what his troops did when they found refugees.

"At times we don't find them. We see them but they get away."

"But when you do find them, what do you do?"

"Oh, we kill them."

"Are they a few people or entire villages?"

"No, entire villages. When we entered the villages we killed some and the rest ran away,"

Under the policy of Rios Montt's army, a civilian found outside the army-controlled towns could be in mortal danger.

"We know the poor people from close up and far away," said Sergeant Miguel Raimundo. "If we see someone walking in the mountains, that means he is a subversive. So we try to grab him and ask where he's going; we arrest him. And then we see if he is a guerrilla or not. But those who always walk in the mountains, we know they are guerrillas. Maybe some of them will be children, but we know that they are subversive delinquents. I've been walking in the mountains for a year now, and just in the mountains, one by one, we've captured more than 500 people."

Sergeant Miguel Raimundo also explained that under the army's assumptions a civilian could also be in danger if they never went anywhere: "A woman told me yesterday that the soldiers kill people, that the soldiers killed her husband. But I told her that if the soldiers killed her husband it was because he was a guerrilla. The soldier knows whom to kill. He doesn't kill the innocent, just the guilty. And she said, 'No, my husband wasn't doing anything.' So I said, 'And how do you know it was nothing? How do you know what he was doing outside?' 'No,' she said, 'because he never went anywhere,' 'Yes,' I said, 'That's because he was a collaborator,' "

It was clear from discussions with these soldiers inside the Ixil zone that, under their orders from Rios Montt and their commanders, including Perez Molina, all civilians were potential targets. Indeed, they were the principal targets.

Lieutenant Romeo Sierra, who directed the sweeps through his patrol area of 20 square kilometers and 10,000 people, told me that thousands of civilians were displaced but that "in the time I've been here (two-and-a-half months) no subversives have fallen. Lots of unarmed people, women refugees, but we haven't had actual combat with guerrillas."

Lieutenant Sierra also said that "human rights" was an "enemy concept." In his army training he had been taught that it had been developed "by international Communism."



Years after he had been ousted from power, I interviewed Rios Montt again. I asked Rios Montt -- a firm believer in the death penalty -- if he thought that he should be tried and executed for his role in the Mayan massacres.

The general leapt to his feet and shouted: "Yes! Try me! Put me against the wall!," but he said he should be tried only if Americans were put on trial too. (See Allan Nairn, "C.I.A. Death Squad: Americans have been directly involved in Guatemalan Army killings," The Nation, April 17, 1995.)

Specifically, Rios Montt cited President Reagan, who, in the midst of the killings, had said that Rios Montt was getting "a bum rap" on human rights.

Rios Montt, for his part, had said: "It's not that we have a policy of scorched earth, just a policy of scorched communists."

http://www.allannairn.org/2013/05/the-guatemala-genocide-case-testimony.html

Permission granted to post in full

[bemildred]

1. Good.

Maybe the dam is finally busted.

[Catherina]

2. Guatemala President says that the Rios Montt judgment is not final / continues to deny genocide

CNN VIDEO at link

(CNNMéxico) - The president of Guatemala, Otto Perez Molina, said that he will be respectful of the justice the courts decreed in his country in respect to Friday's 80-year court sentence for the country's former dictator Efrain Rios Montt for genocide and crimes against humanity.

"Today's ruling is not final (firm)," said Perez Molina, who has repeatedly denied that what happened in Guatemala it a genocide, and considers that the process is not finished because former military lawyers will appeal the sentence to higher courts (instancias superiores), he stated in an interview with journalist Fernando del Rincon in Spanish CNN.

"There need to be given these other facts, I'm not part of the defense of General Rios and I will not be so officially, as president it's for me to be respectful and I ask all Guatemalans also, we need to strengthen courts (instancias), we want to see justice but is not biased towards one or the other side, "he said.

...

President Otto Perez Molina has acknowledged that he belonged to the armed forces of Guatemala during that time period when he used the alias of Mayor Tito Arias.

...

Pérez Molina said in the interview with CNN in Spanish that he is not passing judgment on either the guilt or innocence of Rios Montt; it has nothing to do with "personal benefit" (“beneficio particular”).

http://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2013/05/11/el-presidente-de-guatemala-recuerda-que-la-sentencia-a-rios-montt-no-es-firme/

[naaman fletcher]

3. Thanks for the info

Does Molina admit that he is Tito Arias?

[Catherina]

4. Posted without comment. Now floating around on the Guate interwebz

[Catherina]

5. “Communists infiltrated our justice system... “Those applauding the verdict are all communists.”

Xeni Jardin ‏@xeni 1h

- “Communists infiltrated our justice system,” says Fundacion Contra Terrorismo's Mendez on TV: “Those applauding the verdict are all communists.”

- “Everyone applauding, tomorrow you will have to bow your heads, your tails between your legs.”—Ríos Montt atty Garcia Gudiel, after verdict.

- Watched local TV news coverage of verdict with Ixiles, then reporters, in Guatemala City last night. One channel, @Guatevision_tv stood out

- Unlike other channels, their special coverage consisted of anchor talk, followed by several minutes of raw footage. Ríos Montt speaking.

[Judi Lynn]

13. An enterprising reporter should find out who's behind the terror group,

Fundacion Contra Terrorismo. I absolutely imagine they are getting funding from way beyond their own pockets.

".....tomorrow you will have to bow your heads" sounds like a real threat. Hope it was said defensively, but considering Guatemala's history concerning Rios-Montt, it doesn't seem this dirty shot can be taken lightly.

They're damned mad, all right. These demons don't like their power being threatened by justice.

[Catherina]

15. They already know. It's totally out in the open because they fear no retribution

Somewhere, in one of the previous threads, there's a tweet with the name of the official head of the movement. They're totally out in the open, like the Nazi Montt supporters sporting their copies of Mein Kampf. There are two elites who run the country here- the descendants of the Spanish colonizers and the descendants of German immigrants. They intermarried a lot and they basically own the country. Damned mad doesn't even begin to describe it from what I'm hearing.

[Judi Lynn]

16. That's ugly. So many Nazis went to LatAm countries right after WWII.

Apparently all over the Americas. They seem to fit right in with the fascists who were already there.

It is very strange when people start carrying around their Mein Kampfs, as if they're trying to send messages to whomever is on their wavelength. Who would have time to do a lot of reading at a historic trial? So weird.

[Catherina]

6. Ríos Montt perp walk (no handcuffs) with cops from court to car

Last edited Sat May 11, 2013, 01:21 PM - Edit history (1)

Xeni Jardin ‏@xeni 1h

- The Ríos Montt perp walk (no handcuffs) with cops from court to car. Police van ride from court through streets, sirens blaring. Arrival.

- Riot police with shields, special forces, barricading entrance to prison. Very serious business. Footage rolled with blaring siren audio.

- Then as police van arrives, sound of machine gun fire! No wait just fireworks in street outside prison for Mother's Day. Only in Guatemala.

- Outside court after sentence, they set off huge fireworks at a makeshift Mayan altar, on Palace of Justice plaza, all who couldn't get in.

- And inside the court, they sang. A poem by Guatemalan rebel poet Otto Rene Castillo, led in song by Guatemalan musician Fernando Lopez.

this video recording is from 2009 but Fernando Lopez was in the courthouse yesterday and sang this after the verdict was handed down

- They sang:"Nobody here cried/Here we just want to be human/eat, laugh, fall in love, live/to live life and not die in it/Here no one cried!" “Aquí no lloró nadie/aquí sólo queremos ser humanos/comer, reír, enamorarse, vivir/vivir la vida y no morirla. ¡Aquí no lloró nadie!”

- The hashtag was also a chant in street protests led by Ixiles, and finally, impossibly, transformed into a verdict: #sihubogenocidio.
(#sihubogenocidio means yes there was a genocide!)

- Today: A day of validation+celebration for many indigenous Guatemalans. Just phoned an elderly Kiche man: “Feliz Día de Justicia!,” dijo el.

Weird, I phoned an indigenous friend whose family suffered greatly at the hands of Montt, to wish him the same and all he replied is that it was a political show. I agree that's how it started but I think the show got away from them in certain ways and may only just be beginning.

What she said about Mother's Day is correct. It starts at around 4 in the morning. Fireworks, machine gun fire, cannon booms, loud, loud music from huge speakers on the back of police cars, all to wish the beloved mothers a happy mothers day on the only day they get to sleep in. The first year I experienced this, I almost had a heart attack thinking a local war had broken out or something.

[bemildred]

7. Well, they have compelled him to stand trial and be convicted.

So there was a definite loss of control.

[Catherina]

8. Wow, the elite is sputtering mad

I just had a conversation with a neighbor I ran into on my back from the corner store. He's sputtering mad. "This isn't good for Guatemala". "All those people in that courtroom are communists" "The husbands and sons of those women were all guerrillas, it's all lies".

Wow, my own neighbor, a Ladino who brings me treats and pretends to care about the poor. I quickly had to shift the conversation.

Stupid me. I should have known not to mention anything. Rios Montt's kids live a few blocks away, so does a former President whose helicopters fly in and out all day. It may be time to move. He was really, really mad. "A definite loss of control."

Meanwhile, as we were talking, poor broken elderly people were walking past barefoot, carrying heavy loads, trying to sell whatever stuff/food for a few pennies.

I know what they're afraid of, that the poor will find courage in this.

[bemildred]

9. They are afraid of retribution.

And yeah, watch your mouth, they will lash out. Fear and aggression go together like yin and yang.

[Catherina]

10. I know :(

That was jarring. He kissed my cheek as we parted. A vision of Judas swept through my mind. It's definitely time to move.

[naaman fletcher]

14. Living amount the elite, huh? Nt

[Catherina]

18. It's quite a good thing no one here takes you seriously

It's quite a good thing no one here takes you seriously, well except for a few right wing members who think they're even more clever than you are lol.


Ask all the "innocent questions" you want, you've already discredited yourself quite thoroughly, quite nicely indeed. Throwing out your usual *innocent* shit flame questions and only pretending to acknowledge your *mistake* hours later when you have no other choice. Well done.

[naaman fletcher]

20. No wonder you don't care about crime in VZ

You know all abou how to live among the privileged elite, surrounded by security forces

[Catherina]

21. It's humorous to watch you bury yourself. And pathetic too

but as a member of the 99%, I do thank you for unmasking and ending the facade you tried so lamentably to carry on here.

[Judi Lynn]

22. Ah, ha. I didn't notice that until just now. Good grief! So sad, isn't it?

I glanced at it earlier but didn't catch someone had tried to drag Venezuela into your thread.

Hard UP! Running out of material, I'd say.

[center][/center]

[naaman fletcher]

24. What are you talking about?

You are the one who lives among the elite. I've been robbed twice in panama. You live with the gilded elites and their state security.

[Judi Lynn]

23. Everyone's surrounded by security forces in some countries.

That's the way the right-wing likes it.

By keeping so many people desperately poor, they can be assured many will jump at the chance to join the military just to get food once a day, and a place to sleep, and in return they can hold a gun on the other poor people, just to keep them paralyzed with fear.

That's why they really don't want the poor able to improve their lot in life.

Right wingers have it all figured out, and will fight like devils to prevent the poor people finding a way out of suffering.

But you know this all very well. Who am I telling this to you? Whoops.

[naaman fletcher]

25. Lol

Do I need to dig up every sneer you have made at VZLA students for being rich?

[Judi Lynn]

26. You're not making sense, of course, not even slightly.

Better lie down and sleep it off. That WOULD make sense.

[naaman fletcher]

28. The sense is

You sneer at "rich kids" of VZLA who are concerned about crime, meanwhile your best buddy here is a 1%er who lives among the elite in central america.

It's almost comical.

Of course not having ever been to Central America I am not surprised you are unaware of the difference between how the elite and everyone else lives.

[Catherina]

11. Video: How To Nail A Dictator - Amazing film

Last edited Sat May 11, 2013, 03:20 PM - Edit history (4)

Granito: How To Nail A Dictator

VIDEO at link (Note: direct PBS link to FULL VIDEO)

In a stunning milestone for justice in Central America, a Guatemalan court recently charged former dictator Efraín Rios Montt with genocide for his brutal war against the country's Mayan people in the 1980s — and Pamela Yates' 1983 documentary, When the Mountains Tremble, provided key evidence for bringing the indictment. Granito: How to Nail a Dictator tells the extraordinary story of how a film, aiding a new generation of human rights activists, became a granito — a tiny grain of sand — that helped tip the scales of justice. An Official Selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. A co-production of ITVS. A co-presentation with Latino Public Broadcasting.

Full Film Description:

In January 2012, after 30 years of legal impunity, former Guatemalan general and dictator Efraín Ríos Montt found himself indicted by a Guatemalan court for crimes against humanity. Against all odds, he was charged with committing genocide in the 1980s against the country's poor, Mayan people.

In 1982, a young first-time filmmaker, Pamela Yates, used her seeming naiveté to gain unprecedented access to Ríos Montt, his generals and leftist guerrillas waging a clandestine war deep in the mountains. The resulting film, When the Mountains Tremble (1983) revealed that the Guatemalan army was killing Mayan civilians. As Yates notes in her extraordinary follow-up, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, "Guatemala . . . never let me go." When the Mountains Tremble had re-entered her life 30 years later when a Spanish lawyer investigating the Ríos Montt regime asked for her help. She believed her first film and its outtakes just might contain evidence to bring charges of genocide under international law.



Granito spans 30 years as seven protagonists in Guatemala, Spain and the United States attempt to bring justice to violence-plagued Guatemala. Among the twists of fate:

- A 22-year-old Mayan woman, Rigoberta Menchú, the storyteller in When the Mountains Tremble, goes on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and then initiates the court case against General Ríos Montt that eventually leads to the use of Yates' footage as evidence.

- A guerrilla commander, Gustavo Meoño, who authorized Yates' filming with the insurgents in 1982, becomes a key player in uncovering the mechanisms of disappearances and state terror.

- A young press liaison in Guatemala, Naomi Roht-Arriaza who helped arrange Yates' filming with the guerrillas in 1982 becomes one of the key international lawyers working on the genocide case.

- The head of the Guatemalan forensic anthropology team, Fredy Peccerelli, unearthing evidence of the vast killings, grew up watching When the Mountains Tremble.

Granito is a film about a film and its remarkable afterlife for a filmmaker, a nation and, most dramatically, as evidence in a long struggle to give a dictator's victims their day in court. It is an inside, as-it-happens account of the way a new generation of human rights activists operates in a globalized, media-saturated world. Granito shows how multiple efforts--the work of the lawyers, the testimony of survivors, a documentary film, the willingness of a Spanish judge to assert international jurisdiction--each become a granito, a tiny grain of sand, adding up to tip the scales of justice.

Even after Ríos Montt was deposed and a tenuous democracy restored in Guatemala in 1986, he and the generals continued to enjoy wealth, status and participation in politics. In 1999, a U.N.-sponsored truth commission concluded that genocide had been committed by the government, and that same year President Clinton declared that U.S. support for military forces and intelligence units that engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong. Even the Guatemalan generals, who claimed that overzealous field commanders were to blame, admitted that crimes had occurred.


Military occupation of the Guatemalan highlands, 1982. The 1998 Truth Commission concluded that successive dictatorships committed genocide against the Maya population.
Credit: Jean-Marie Simon.

...

http://www.pbs.org/pov/granito/film_description.php#.UY6H_Mplif9

http://www.pbs.org/pov/granito/index.php#.UY6IFsplif9

Here's the trailer. The movie is available in full online but not on Youtube

[Catherina]

12. Guate TV running government announcements now

Xeni Jardin ‏@xeni 23m

- Meanwhile in Guatemala, the state of siege in large area east of the capital will soon enter its third week. Thousands of police, soldiers.

- As we watch Ríos Montt verdict news on local TV, inbetween segments they're running a PSA produced by the government of Guatemala.

- It's about 2 mins long; 5 "neighbors of Santa Rosa & Jalapa” speak to camera about how they're happy the month-long State of Siege is ongoing.

- I traveled to those areas and spoke to residents. The Gov't's pro-Siege PSA doesn't reflect what I heard from people I spoke with.

- During local news coverage of verdict last night, graphic '82 footage of soldiers (or police) dragging near-dead man in street. Kicking him.

- How amazing it would be to access the archival vaults of Guatemalan TV news, for this footage & Ríos Montt's (at least) weekly TV addresses.

- “Usted, Papa! Usted, Mama!," the general screamed on TV, scolding them on their obligation to the state to fight communism in their children.

- Something about watching that grainy 1982 footage of armed troops kicking a dying indigenous man, as if he were a dog, that brings it home.


PSA = Public Service Announcement

[Judi Lynn]

17. Very odd focus for government announcements. Not good. n/t

[Catherina]

19. No, it's really not.

Which is why moving trucks are already scheduled and I'm moving elsewhere- *elsewhere* where I'll be even more of a thorn in the side of the Right wing here and everywhere.

[Judi Lynn]

27. That's a timely idea. You won't be alone.

Sounds as if no one in the country is going to be alone for awhile, as well!

I remember reading in one of the reports the government had people there taking photos of the people in the court room, etc. as they cheered for the court's decision.

That could have been more subtle....