Reparations (lol) for Ixiles & Defense lawyers seek to impeach judges in the Montt trial

[Catherina]

Rios Montt Trial ‏@RiosMonttTrial 8h

Defense lawyers seek to impeach judges in the Montt trial http://www.prensalibre.com/noticias/justicia/Piden-reparacion-digna-victimas_0_918508171.html … via @prensa_libre

NISGUA ‏@NISGUA_Guate 6h

- Back live in the #GenocideGT courtroom awaiting hearing on reparations to victims

- #GenocideGT reparations hearing has started w all plaintiffs present. #JMRodrguez here, #RiosMontt hasn't arrived from prison yet.

- Re #RiosMontt absence from reparations hearing, #GarciaGudiel states RM health being assessed.

NISGUA ‏@NISGUA_Guate 5h

- Lawyer Santiago Choc Cuc addressing the court on behalf of plaintiffs in #GenocideGT reparations hearing.

- Choc Cuc speaks of indemnization, community reparations w/o prejudice against the victims. #GenocideGT

- Re recognition of the victims, Choc: We request measures relative to the restitution of the values of the Maya Ixil people.

[Catherina]

1. Rios Montt has Pinochet Syndrome, calls in *sick*

Renata Avila ‏@avilarenata 5h

- Oh my predictions. #RiosMontt with Pinochet Syndrome. ¨Sick¨, probably in military hospital (better than public ones) (payed with our taxes)

- In #Guatemala if you are indigenous and poor, you have no access to a decent hospital. Not even a clinic. If you are a General....

- #RiosMontt 3 nights in VIP prison for Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide in #Guatemala. Now he is "sick".

[Catherina]

2. Requesting Apology to Intl Community, UN and the Ixil people

NISGUA ‏@NISGUA_Guate 5h

- Choc: Apologize to intl community & #UN for acts of genocide & crimes vs humanity committed vs Ixil people, as an attack vs all humanity.

- Plaintiffs ask govt apology for #GenocideGT be written on parchment & given to mayorships of Nebaj/Cotzal/Chajul

- reparations request: monument in each of municipalities of Nebaj/Cotzal/Chajul

- Plaintiffs ask reparations requests be complied w/in 6 months.

- reparations requests: postal stamp in honor of Ixil ppl & celebrating ethnic diversity.

- reparations requests: Declassification of documents & made avail to public

- CALDH lawyer Hector Reyes will now speak to reparations requests for #GenocideGT

- Reyes: When victims were asked what want of the state they said, "What we want is justice." This was never for financial reasons.

- Re March 23 as Natl Day Against #Genocide: this was date #RiosMontt seized power in coup, 1982

- Plaintiff request w/in #GenocideGT reparations that Convention 169 of ILO be respected.

- Convention 169 states indigenous peoples have right to free, prior & informed consent re projects in their territories. #GenocideGT reparations

[Judi Lynn]

4. Outstanding requests. Well considered. n/t

[ocpagu]

3. This could be a turning point for Guatemala...

... and the other fragile democracies of Central America. It could be the start of the end of the impunity era.

So, we should expect the right-wing to do everything they can to reverse the verdict.

[Catherina]

5. It could be but I don't think it will be any more than a slow start, a small opening

and you're right. They're already doing everything they can to reverse the verdict. The appeals are already in and they've got some heavy hitters on their side.

On Friday night, after the verdict, President Otto Perez Molina (who was once an Army commander in the Ixil region under Rios Montt) gave an interview on CNN en Español. The interviewer asked the Guatemalan President about his possible culpability for similar crimes. The transmission signal was cut. From El Periodico, a newspaper in Guatemala:

The interview became more uncomfortable for Perez when the interviewer questioned him about documentary American journalist Allan Nairn, in September 1982, where he declares that "all families are with the guerrillas."

At that time, the signal from Guatemala was cut and the corner had to take a break. After re-establish communication, the president said that the protected witness who identified him as responsible for the massacres in Nebaj is false.

http://www.elperiodico.com.gt/es/20130511/pais/228130/

http://boingboing.net/2013/05/13/guatemala-rios-montt-supporte.html

I bookmarked the video if you want to watch it. He added too, quite defiantly, that the verdict isn't final and that the appeal process is just starting.

If Rios Montt is just some sacrificial lamb so Congress can say "see! human rights improvement!" for military aid to resume in the fight against (insert foreign policy noun here), then I fear Montt was right, it's just a political international show.

[naaman fletcher]

8. It's hard to say

It could also be the opposite in a way. The sacrificial lamb thrown to the wolves so that the others get away.

[Catherina]

6. request mobile museum to educate on human rts, cultural diversity, & against repetition of Genocide

NISGUA ‏@NISGUA_Guate 5h

Plaintiffs request a mobile museum to education on human rts, cultural diversity, & against repetition of #GenocideGT

[Judi Lynn]

9. It's only right! People must learn what has been hidden. It's too important. n/t

[Catherina]

7. request restitution of land in Nebaj, consultation for territories & natural resources

NISGUA ‏@NISGUA_Guate 5h

- Plaintiffs request restitution of land ceded in Nebaj w/o consent of displaced population during #GenocideGT

- Plaintiffs ask exec branch to consult indigenous ppl in all actions affecting their territories & natural resources

- Public prosecutor states their support for the reparations requested by the plaintiffs in #GenocideGT trial.

[Catherina]

10. Rios Montt lawyer says requests are unconstitutional

NISGUA ‏@NISGUA_Guate

- #RiosMontt lawyer Francisco Palomo: Sentence is vs an individual & petition of plaintiffs is vs state of GUA, therefore unconstitutional

- #GarciaGudiel agrees with Palomo. Plaintiffs are asking for state reparation when state was never 3rd party in case.

Garcia Gudiel is another one of Montt's lawyers who was just denounced to the Bar for sleazy practices in this case

NISGUA ‏@NISGUA_Guate

Judges deliberate plaintiffs' requests re: reparations for reparation

Rios Montt Trial ‏@RiosMonttTrial 5h

- Arguments on reparations concluded in an hours time at 9:20am; the tribunal is deliberation its decision.

- Defense objected to the reparations on the ground that punish the government of Guatemala, which was not a party to the trial.

[Catherina]

11. In courtroom next door, case of pol prisoner Ruben Herrera

NISGUA ‏@NISGUA_Guate 4h

Courtrm next to #GenocideGT reparations hearing rules case of pol prisoner Ruben Herrera will be moved to Guate. http://ow.ly/kYLSw

Take Action: Demand Guatemalan Authorities Halt Criminalization and Persecution of Political Prisoner, Rubén Herrera

Since Friday, March 15, human rights defender and member of the Departmental Assembly of Huehuetenango for the Defense of Natural Resources (ADH), Rubén Herrera, has been unjustly imprisoned for alleged crimes committed in relation to community resistance of the Cambalam hydroelectric dam, operated by Hidro Santa Cruz. Citing 12 charges, including kidnapping and terrorism, a Guatemalan judge denied Herrera's bail, ordering the case move to pretrial proceedings on May 30, 2013.



The arrest and imprisonment of Rubén Herrera is the most recent example of the systematic criminalization and persecution of community leaders and human rights activists defending territory and communities' right to self-determination. Perhaps most notable are the actions of the Public Prosecutor's Office, the entity responsible for prosecuting the case. During the arraignment, they argued the case should not continue as there is insufficient evidence linking him to the alleged crimes. Despite the lack of evidence, the judge ordered that the case against Herrera move forward.

The work of Rubén and the ADH to construct alternatives and promote democratic participation in the key issues Guatemala is facing today is a response to a historic wrong committed against indigenous peoples. The current trial of former Guatemalan leaders for genocide highlights the state’s violation of the basic rights of indigenous and rural people in Guatemala. Unfortunately, today’s repression of peaceful and legitimate social movements in defense of territory and towards self-determination is using distinct, yet disturbingly familiar strategies to criminalize and delegitimize the voice of indigenous peoples.

...

http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/6497/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=13678

Petition at link

The undersigned thoroughly condemn the capture of Guatemalan human rights defender Rubén Herrera on March 15th, and call for his immediate release. Rubén’s unjust incarceration is part of a strategy to delegitimize, defame, and intimidate community leaders in Barillas, Huehuetenango who oppose the construction of the Cambalam hydroelectric dam.

The persecution of men and women who stand up for their internationally recognized right to consultation about development projects which impact their communities must stop. Rubén's case reflects a troublesome trend in which the Guatemalan justice system is being misused and manipulated in order to preemptively punish activists, community leaders, and human rights defenders.

We support the efforts of the Guatemalan Public Prosecutor's office to dismiss the baseless charges against Rubén, in compliance with their mandate to preserve the rule of law and respect for human rights. We join our voices with those of countless others in Guatemala and around the world to plead for justice and call for Rubén Herrera's immediate release!

[Catherina]

12. Judges order personal apologies to Ixil women for the sexual violence against them

NISGUA ‏@NISGUA_Guate 4h

- Judges are back from deliberating #GenocideGT reparations.

- Judges order personal apologies to Ixil women for the sexual violence against them. #GenocideGT reparations

[Catherina]

13. Judges order ceremonies in Natl Palace, monuments, education centers, Natl Day

NISGUA ‏@NISGUA_Guate 4h

- Judges order ceremonies in Natl Palace, Ixil municipalities. #GenocideGT #reparations

- Judges order monuments, education centers in Ixil municipalities #GenocideGT #Reparations

- Judges order March 23 be named Natl Day Against Genocide via govt resolution #GenocideGT #Reparations

- Judges order educations programs be developed so acts of genocide or crimes against humanity not be repeated

- Judges clarifies the state is not being condemned but mechanisms of state are used to provide

NISGUA ‏@NISGUA_Guate 5h

- Plaintiffs demand a person apology from #RiosMontt, "esp to the Ixil women for the acts of sexual violence committed against them."

- Plaintiffs request all branches of govt, Interior Min, Def Min apologize to the Ixil people in the Natl Palace & in Nebaj/Chajul/Cotzal

[Catherina]

14. No restitution of land. Their only economic request- denied

NISGUA ‏@NISGUA_Guate 4h

- Judges didn't accept plaintiffs' requests for restitution of land, respect for Convention 169, Commission to ensure #reparations compliance.

- #Reparations hearing for #GenocideGT victims concluded. The only economic request made by victims was for restitution of land: denied.

Rios Montt Trial ‏@RiosMonttTrial 1h

Judge Barrios ordered the reparations.

[Catherina]

15. PBS Video: Inside the Landmark Genocide Conviction of Guatemala's Efraín Ríos Montt

Inside the Landmark Genocide Conviction of Guatemala's Efraín Ríos Montt

SUMMARY
What does the conviction of Efraín Ríos Montt mean for the former Guatemala dictator, that country's fragile judicial system and for the families of the victims? Hari Sreenivasan talks to producer Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing, who was in the courtroom at the time of the verdict.

...

You could see as you looked around the courtroom, Hari, that people were weeping. There were mothers holding their children and kind of swaying to the rhythm. The Ixil grandmothers who had testified of being gang-raped by 20 soldiers at a time for weeks on end, many of these women, they weren't cheering. They were weeping. It was just such a powerful, powerful moment.

....

HARI SREENIVASAN: So what happens to these victims now? Is there a compensation? Who pays?

XENI JARDIN: Victims' representatives say that, look, these indigenous campesinos, they were robbed of their land. They were displaced from their land. They are subsistence farmers.

Many, many families in that region lost their breadwinners. Who should be responsible for them? Is that Rios Montt's estate who should pay that out? What about the government of Guatemala?

I almost think that this is the more contentious issue than whether or not Rios Montt as an individual can be found guilty of these crimes. The idea of reparations to victims in this case is something that many people in Guatemala are -- have a very hostile reaction to.

...

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/jan-june13/guatemala2_05-13.html

[Catherina]

16. Video: A Right to Justice (on the Guatemalan Genocide (Achi Indians)

Guatemala has seen over 36 years of military dictatorship, initiated and supported by the US with technical advisors, equipment and funding, and 250 000 civilians, particularly children and women, were massacred by the paramilitaries during the civil war. Thousands of clandestine mass graves are still all over the country.
1996 the peace accords were signed, before only the armed struggle was an alternative to oppose the military dictatorship.

Today atrocities are still not talked about, the paramilitary forces and the intellectual authors of massacres not convicted nor do they stand in court, and many mass graves have not yet been exhuminated.

Jesus Tecu Osorio is one of the few human rights activists in Guatemala who has been able to give evidence against and the only one to thereby convict three paramilitary perpetrators of some of their crimes - linking them directly to at least one of the five massacres occuring to his community during 1981 and 1982.
He spoke at an event hosted by Amnesty International in Edinburgh, on Thursday, 17th of march 2005.

Jesus Tecu Osorio is a Maya of the Achi speaking people, he is one of the few survivors of the Rio Negro massacre, at which 70 women and 107 boys and girls were killed on the 13th of March 1982.

In 1975 INDE, the state elecricity company planned to build an hydroelectric dam on the Rio Negro River over the next 5 years, supported by the World Bank and the Inter American Development Bank. The communities there were then subject to general state repression as they opposed the construction of the dam due to the fact that their land was taken from them without any compensation.

In March 1980 the first massacre took place. The community leaders were kidnapped for a meeting with the electricity company NDE, and their bodies were found on a road site some days later with marks of torture.

On the 4th of March 1981 the army arrived in Rio Negro, and started to raid houses and arrest people. 75 village leaders were massacred on the 13th of february 1982.
On the 13th of march 1982 the army and the PACV massacred 70 widows and 107 orphans. The survivors took refuge in Los Encuentros, but the army followed them and captured 90 people. 40 women and children were taken away -never to be seen again, and 40 people were tortured and killed on the spot.

...

At the beginning of 1990 skeletons were still lying all over the place.

...
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/03/306853.html

On March 13, 1982, 177 women and children from the Mayan village of Rio Negro, Guatemala, were tortured, raped, and massacred by the Guatemalan army and army-led civil patrol groups. Ten year-old Jesus Tecu Osorio witnessed and survived the murders of his family and neighbors, only to be enslaved as a servant for three years in the home of one of the killers. Jesus eventually escaped and went on to win the Reebok Human Rights Award for his tireless work to bring the guilty to justice.

This short video describes the events in the context of Guatemala's brutal civil war and the subsequent struggle of the indigenous Maya Achi people to have the truth of the genocide revealed, to mourn, and to seek justice for the victims.

[Catherina]

17. Some really stunning pictures by Daniel Hernández-Salazar, NYT

Unfortunately they can't be embedded

Daniel Hernández-Salazar is used to waiting. Two decades ago he abandoned his photojournalistic career to devote himself to documenting the search for justice in the wake of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war. He stood at exhumations alongside indigenous Maya, as they waited to spy a bracelet or scrap of muddy fabric that would allow them to finally locate the bones of a loved one. More recently, he stood among them in a Guatemala City courtroom as the former dictator, Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, was sentenced to 80 years for genocide and crimes against humanity.

When the verdict was read, he could barely comprehend it.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/a-quest-for-justice-in-guatemala/?smid=fb-share

[Catherina]

18. (lol) Molina says he's wanted to apologize for a long time / 12 appeals pending b4 verdict is final

Immediately following the hearing, the tribunal deliberated and, within 40 minutes, the trial court approved some but not all of the reparations. The court ordered largely symbolic reparations—intended to preserve the dignity of the victims, promote remembrance, and force the country to confront the horrors of the past.

...

The court rejected, without providing reasoning, some of the more significant and structural reparations requested—including those related to the repatriation of land ceded by the Maya Ixil without their consent; and the establishment of a program for sustainable development in the Ixil communities, including health system, infrastructure and educational reforms.

The tribunal also refused to order the creation of a high-level commission to oversee the implementation of the reparations, as well as a commission to search for victims of forced disappearance. The civil parties requested a law criminalizing genocide denial and hate speech against racial minorities; the court rejected this as well. In defending this request, CALDH highlighted that genocide continues to be too often denied in Guatemala.

...

The Government’s Response

Following the reparations hearing, Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina quickly announced his willingness to ensure compliance with at least some of the reparations ordered by the court. He stated that he would have no objection to issuing a public apology to the Ixil people, as ordered by the tribunal. He said, in fact, that he has wanted to offer this apology since the signing of the peace agreements and would welcome the opportunity today.

Perez Molina also stated that the Foreign Ministry will issue a communication soon charging the National Reparations Program with including the communities of the so-called Ixil triangle under the 2003 Law on Reparations, in a signal to the international community of Guatemala’s willingness to comply with its human rights obligations.

Perez Molina has been strongly criticized at some points during the trial for public statements suggesting high-level political disagreement with the charges—challenging that there was ever a genocide in Guatemala and strongly suggesting that the trial, and a conviction, would destabilize the country.

...

Legal Challenges Ahead

It is expected that the trial court will issue the final judgment on Friday, June 17, 2013. However, the guilty verdict does not become final, if at all, until all appellate recourses have been exhausted. Defense counsel will have 15 days from the date that the final judgment is formally issued to file an appeal.

Rios Montt’s defense counsel have highlighted publicly that already have pending at least 12 legal challenges before various judicial authorities—eight before the Supreme Court (Corte Suprema de Justicia) and four before the Constitutional Court (Corte de Constitucionalidad). Garcia Gudiel also stated that he plans to file other challenges, asserting that the court did not comply with binding court orders.

Moises Galindo, lawyer for co-accused Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, has publicly stated that he filed at least one new legal challenge to the trial despite his client’s acquittal of both charges against him on Friday. Rodriguez Sanchez, former head of intelligence under Rios Montt, was acquitted of both genocide and crimes against humanity charges. Galindo stated that, on Rodriguez Sanchez’ behalf, he filed an amparo challenging the tribunal’s advancement of the trial five months. (The trial started in March though it had previously been scheduled to start in August.)

Galindo also stated that he filed on Sunday a challenge before the Constitutional Court seeking the dismissal of the three judges in the tribunal. According to Prensa Libre, Galindo’s legal challenge asserts that the tribunal did not adhere to a prior Constitutional Court order; he seeks the annulment of the trial.

...

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http://www.riosmontt-trial.org/2013/05/court-orders-reparations-following-rios-montt-conviction-on-genocide-and-crimes-against-humanity-charges/