Genocide trial of former Guatemala dictator begins

[Judi Lynn]

Genocide trial of former Guatemala dictator begins
by AFP
Wednesday, 20 March 2013, 11 : 30 am



Guatemala City: Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt went on trial Tuesday on genocide charges over the killing of almost 1,800 indigenous people during the dark days of his country's civil war.

The trial of the 86-year-old former strongman, who could face five decades in prison, had a raucous opening with the three-judge court rejecting several defense motions for a postponement, and expelling a lawyer representing Rios Montt.

Wearing a dark suit and polka dot tie, Rios Montt sat stone-faced between his two attorneys in a packed Supreme Court room. He requested a bathroom break as the court reviewed several objections lodged by his lawyers.

Some 500 people filled the courtroom, ranging from indigenous women and rights activists looking for justice to former right-wing paramilitary fighters and relatives of soldiers still loyal to Rios Montt's legacy.

More:
http://www.timesofoman.com/News/Article-11358.aspx

[Judi Lynn]

1. Call for justice opens Guatemala ex-leader trial

Call for justice opens Guatemala ex-leader trial
By SONIA PEREZ-DIAZ, Associated Press | March 19, 2013 | Updated: March 19, 2013 10:22pm

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — The first witness in the trial of Guatemala's former U.S.-backed dictator testified Tuesday that soldiers razed his village in 1982, killing dozens of his neighbors, tearing the hearts out of victims and setting fire to houses.

Nicolas Brito was the first of at least 150 witnesses expected to give their testimony in the trial of Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, the first Latin American strongman to be tried on genocide charges in his own country.

Brito, an indigenous Ixil who survived the army's attack on the village of Canaque in the town of Santa Maria Nebaja, says he escaped and watched as soldiers attacked his village.

"A lot of women died because they were preparing the dough (for tortillas) when soldiers arrived and they couldn't run," Brito said in Ixil through an interpreter. "The soldiers tore the victims' hearts out and put them on a little table, they piled them there."

More:
http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Call-for-justice-opens-Guatemala-ex-leader-trial-4367092.php

[Judi Lynn]

2. Trial of an American Ally: Ghosts of Foreign Policy Past in Guatemala

Trial of an American Ally: Ghosts of Foreign Policy Past in Guatemala
by Constantino Diaz-Duran Mar 24, 2013 4:45 AM EDT

Former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt is facing charges of genocide, a first for Latin America. It’s also a reminder of the slaughter that U.S. intelligence agencies decided to ignore.


An historic trial is taking place in Central America. Former military dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt is being tried for genocide in his native Guatemala. This is the first time a Latin American despot has faced trial for such charges in his own country.

I lived in Guatemala during his dictatorship. I was a young child when he seized power in a March 1982 coup, and my recollection of his dictatorship is vague, but I have vivid memories of people reminiscing about his term years later—my parents and other people around me often spoke of the Ríos Montt era as a time when things were not so bad, when crime and violence were under control.

Growing up in Guatemala City in the 1980s, I lived in a bubble. Decades later, having spent most of my adult life in the United States, I see Ríos Montt—who received the support of the U.S. government—more critically. I look at what happened during that time not as a Guatemalan, but as an American. And I look for lessons to draw upon as we (hopefully) continue to debate our nation’s role on the world stage.

The bloodshed that took place during the Ríos Montt presidency seems undeniable. My parents’ view of that time through rose-colored glasses is explained partly by the fact that his coup against General Romeo Lucas García allowed my family to return to Guatemala after a brief exile in Florida. My parents have never been political, and had no ties to any government. But my dad’s successful business enterprises had put him in the sights of Lucas García’s lackeys. They tried to extort money out of him by threatening to kidnap or otherwise harm someone in the family. My dad refused to pay, and in response, a group of gunmen showed up at his office one day, presumably to kill him. He escaped through a window, rushed home, and he and my mom made the decision to move to Miami.

More:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/24/trial-of-an-american-ally-ghosts-of-foreign-policy-past-in-guatemala.html

[a la izquierda]

3. Good, I hope he gets what he deserves...

All the pain, misery, and torture he oversaw; the horrors that those poor people endured...it's too much to conceive.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Guatemalan Government's Road to Redemption

Published on Monday, March 25, 2013 by Common Dreams

Guatemalan Government's Road to Redemption

by César Chelala

The current trial of Guatemala’s former de facto President Gen Efrain Ríos Montt is the most significant human rights event in the recent history of that nation. By many accounts, Ríos Montt is responsible for the worst human rights abuses committed by the military in Latin America. His trial and eventual punishment can change the political panorama in Guatemala, and be redemption for its military rulers’ cruel past.

Ríos Montt’s trial is only possible now because, as a congressman, he had enjoyed immunity from prosecution for 12 years. He was the head of a military regime (1982-1983) that carried out the worst atrocities of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war that ended with a peace treaty in 1996. It is estimated that at least 200,000 Guatemalans were killed during the conflict.

I became aware of the Guatemalan military’s human rights abuses in the early eighties, when I interviewed Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchú in New York. During our conversation she told me about the terrible things happening in her country. Although some people tried to discredit her testimony saying that it was fabricated, it proved to be correct in its essential details.

Her testimony of the military’s genocidal policies was later amply confirmed by two important Truth Commissions, the REMHI report (Proyecto Interdiocesano de Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica) sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church in Guatemala and the CEH report (Historical Clarification Commission) conducted by the United Nations.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/25-5

[Catherina]

5. Todo Somos HIJOS

Rebel Diaz-"Golpe" (Todo Somos HIJOS)

H.I.J.O.S. (Hijas y Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio / Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Forgetting and Silence ), an organization composed of young people whose parents were victims of the bloody 36-year Guatemalan civil war.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Wow. Thank you. This is really good. n/t

[sabrina 1]

7. I bet there are few of his supporters in this country who are not too happy

to see that while we ignore the rule of law here, other countries do actually take these crimes seriously. Too bad his enablers in this country are not also on trial with him.

I'm sure, cowards that these people usually are, they would deny knowing him.

We have so many dictator friends. Still do. It's something that needs to get a lot more attention. The crimes this government participated in.

And considering not a thing has changed regarding US foreign policy, we are still supporting Right Wing Dictators while smearing Democratically elected and decent people who actually care about their people.

It's good to see these brutal dictators finally being brought to justice. No doubt he will be treated far better than he ever treated innocent people.

[Judi Lynn]

9. In their hearts the rightists still support these people, just as the Chilean right has always loved

Pinochet, even now, as witnessed when Pinochet was said to have died, and they all waddled out into the streets to blow wet kisses at the car bearing his raggedy, dusty old cadaver, as it rolled by them.

They probably drowned their sorrows by having extra dessert.

Insane, narcissistic, hate-filled, torture-loving, power-mad, slimy sociopaths are the ones the right hold dearest, and the ones who get the strongest support from the U.S. as it hands out citizens' hard-earned tax dollars annually to the biggest US suck-ups in the world. The money from the people of the U.S. doesn't go to programs to bring help bring education, healing, shelter to the poor, it ends up as heavy financing of the militaries so their puppet presidents can keep the chains of fear in place, and the people broken, too afraid to move in their own defense.

Thank you.

[sabrina 1]

10. Yes, they share that love of dictators with the US

I wonder what causes this affliction, this belief that cruel, brutal people like Pinochet, are to be revered.

I do believe that part of it, at least among the ignorant, is the example set by the leadership of a country. And a lack of normal human emotions, such as empathy for the victims.

I have learned sadly over the past decade that our leadership appears to favor always, these Far Right dictators. Yet many of us believed we were the 'good guys'. That of course was due to ignorance which is part of the policy I suppose, to keep the people from knowing much about what we were doing to other nations overseas.

Even now this government supports brutal dictators, in Uzbekistan eg, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and our tax dollars often go to help keep them in power. I remember reading one of the Wikileaks cables on Karamov/Uzbekistan and being sickened to learn that they KNOW how cruel and brutal these people are, but toss it off with a comment like 'well, yes, he's a bad guy, but he lets us put our military bases in Uzbekistan'.

Some day there should be studies done to find out what motivates these far right criminals and their supporters. It is disturbing how similar they are from one country to another. Is it a human defect afflicting so many people, a kind of desease of the mind, or is it the result of indoctrination? I hope it is the latter as that can be fixed.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Guatemala genocide trial: Day 6.

Guatemala genocide trial: Day 6.
"If I die, the story of what I lived will never be forgotten"

Xeni Jardin at 9:43 am Tue, Mar 26



As Emi McLean writes on the Open Society Justice Initiative's blog about the genocide trial in Guatemala, "Semana Santa (or Holy Week) seemed to slow down Guatemala City everywhere but in Judge Jazmin Barrios’s courtroom on Monday."

And the trial continues at breakneck speed. The prosecution of Jose Efraín Rios Montt, the Army general who ruled Guatemala from 1982-1983, and his then-chief of military intelligence Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, re-opens for the 6th day today in Guatemala City. The charges of genocide and crimes against humanity they face are based on evidence of systematic massacres of Mayan citizens by Guatemalan troops and paramilitary forces during a most bloody phase of the country's 36-year civil war. The US government provided assistance to Montt and other Guatemalan military dictators that followed in that era, in the form of funding, training, military and CIA personnel, and weapons that were used against the indigenous population.

~ snip ~

On Monday, March 25, the court heard 13 witnesses for the prosecution recount horrifying accounts of atrocities they witnessed and survived, committed by soldiers under Montt’s command.

Witnesses continued to describe the way that they were treated as subhuman: “as if we were animals”. Some witnesses also described being liberated with the recounting.

More:
http://boingboing.net/2013/03/26/guatemala-genocide-trial-day.html