Loss puts Guatemalan ex-dictator in lion's den

[Judi Lynn]

Loss puts Guatemalan ex-dictator in lion's den
By CATHERINE ELTON
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Foreign Service

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala -- When Guatemala swears in new leaders this week, the television cameras will focus on incoming President Oscar Berger and members of a reshuffled Congress. But some human rights groups will be just as interested in a man who is losing power.

Former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who gave up the top spot in Congress to chase the presidency, now faces the consequences of his political gamble. After Wednesday's inauguration, the 77-year-old retired army general surrenders legislative immunity that shielded him from prosecution.

The man widely considered to be the most powerful in Guatemalan politics during the past four years will face a greater threat that he'll be tried for war crimes and genocide allegedly committed during his short but bloody rule in the early 1980s. (snip)

(snip) Lopez estimates that 50,000 of the 200,000 deaths and disappearances during Guatemala's 36-year armed conflict, which ended in 1996, occurred during Rios Montt's rule. Guatemalan prosecutors are still investigating the survivor association's criminal complaints, which accuse Rios Montt of ordering the genocide of Maya Indians during his rule. Lopez expects that prosecutors could present the case to the courts in April. (snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/2347092

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(snip) According to Amnesty International, in just four months there were more than 2,000 fully documented extrajudicial killings by the Guatemalan army: ‘People of all ages were not only shot, they were burned alive, hacked to death, disembowelled, drowned, beheaded. Small children were smashed against rocks or bayoneted to death.’ The Catholic bishops said: ‘Never in our national history has it come to such extremes.’ US President Ronald Reagan, visiting Guatemala on a swing through Latin America, hailed Rios Montt as ‘totally dedicated to democracy’.

http://www.newint.org/issue338/worldbeaters.htm


The image of Reagan's friend Rios Montt is on the poster.

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(snip) "Rios Montt has been supported by Pat Robertson (Christian Broadcasting
Network), Jerry Falwell (Moral Majority, Thomas Road Baptist Church,
Liberty Federation), and Loren Cunningham (Youth with a Mission). They have
worked with the Florida Cuban community. . . Jimmy Swaggart Ministries has
provided financial support for the schools of El Verbo in Guatemala. This
is done under the ‘Programa Ayuda Infantile,’ a branch of the Swaggart
ministry.� 30.

Pat Robertson's organization funded Gospel Outreach to help Rios Montt
build ‘model villages’ for the Guatemalan peasants. These model villages
were, like the Jesus Movement, “based on ‘communitarianism,’ a system of
church-centered community ownership of property that vaguely would include
private ownership of homes and land.� 31. Gospel Outreach’s fundraising
arm in the U.S., International Love Lift, was able to raise $1.5 million
for Rios Montt’s program. The authors of Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of
the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, describe
the fruit of Gospel Outreach – which turned out not to be model villages,
but a genocidal campaign that was perpetuated largely because of
Evangelical funding and petitions to President Reagan: “The irony of
name was outranked only by the name of its fund-raising
arm in the United States, which was endorsed by TV evangelist Pat
Robertson: International Love Lift. . . (snip/...)

http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20030721/018059.html

[La_Serpiente]

1. And here is Raygun praising Montt

As a man "dedicated to democracy"

http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/052699a2.html

I hope they put Montt before a war crimes tribunal and all those that supported his genocides. This is one example of fundamentalism gone disgusting.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Don't think we'll be hearing any uproar from the rightwing extremist

over Efrain Rios Montt, when everything you can read about him indicates he was as vile as Saddam Hussein could ever hope to be, he simply didn't have the NUMBERS.

This is an OUTSTANDING report, La_Serpiente. So glad to read it and recognize an item at the end we have all forgotten in the last decade:

(snip) According to the newly declassified U.S. records, the Guatemalan reality included torture out of the Middle Ages. A Defense Intelligence Agency cable reported that the Guatemalan military used an air base in Retalhuleu during the mid-1980s as a center for coordinating the counterinsurgency campaign in southwest Guatemala.

At the base, pits were filled with water to hold captured suspects. "Reportedly there were cages over the pits and the water level was such that the individuals held within them were forced to hold on to the bars in order to keep their heads above water and avoid drowning," the DIA report stated. Later, the pits were filled with concrete to eliminate the evidence.

The Guatemalan military used the Pacific Ocean as another dumping spot for political victims, according to the DIA report. Bodies of insurgents tortured to death and of live prisoners marked for “disappearance” were loaded on planes that flew out over the ocean where the soldiers would shove the victims into the water.

The history of the Retalhuleu death camp was uncovered by accident in the early 1990s, the DIA reported on April 11, 1994. A Guatemalan officer wanted to let soldiers cultivate their own vegetables on a corner of the base.

But the officer was taken aside and told to drop the request "because the locations he had wanted to cultivate were burial sites that had been used by the D-2 during the mid-eighties." (snip/)

I don't know how it happened, but this last article actually MADE IT TO OUR MEDIA in the '90's, although it was surely only in passing.

[whatelseisnew]

3. Will we be seeing Rios Montt in Miami anytime soon? (n/t)

[acmavm]

4. If they try this guy for anything and it's an open trial, there are more

than a few people still in government in this country who are going to be in big trouble. We propped up that guy, and the American government backed, if not encouraged, him. We provided money and training for his "intelligence" network. The US was an accessory before, during, and after the fact, so to speak. This will be really ugly if the truth starts getting out. And it will provide more proof that US administrations are more than happy to provide aid and assistance to governments that murder their own people if those killings seem to benefit corporate USA in some way. Sort of like Saddam, no?