Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalThe Bias of Human Rights Watch
March 14, 2013
Promoting Injustice
The Bias of Human Rights Watch
by GARRY LEECH
Sydney, Nova Scotia.
Over the past thirty years, Human Rights Watch has become one of the most recognized non-governmental organizations in the world due to its global promotion of human rights. But despite its claims to be an advocate of international human rights law, the reports issued by Human Rights Watch over the past decade have increasingly exhibited a bias towards certain rights over others. More precisely, Human Rights Watch repeatedly focuses on political and civil rights while ignoring social and economic rights. As a result, it routinely judges nations throughout the world in a manner that furthers capitalist values and discredits governments seeking socialist alternatives. It is this bias that lies at the root of Human Rights Watch’s scathing attacks on the government of Venezuela its recently deceased president Hugo Chávez. This bias was also evident in comments made in 2012 by Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, when he declared that Venezuela is “the most abusive” nation in Latin America.
According to Human Rights Watch’s mission statement, “Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world” and in order to achieve that objective “We challenge governments and those who hold power to end abusive practices and respect international human rights law.” The international human rights law referred to by Human Rights Watch is rooted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was passed by the UN General Assembly in 1948. The Declaration encompasses political, civil, social, economic and cultural rights.
Capitalist nations, particularly the United States, have never been comfortable with the articles of the UN Declaration that require governments to guarantee the social and economic rights of their citizens. Among the social and economic rights that contravene capitalist values are the right to “food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services” (Article 25) as well as the right “to share in scientific advancement and its benefits” (Article 27). In a capitalist society, responsibility for obtaining food, clothing, housing and medical care rests with the individual not the state. Likewise, it is not the state’s responsibility to ensure that all citizens share equally in the benefits of scientific advancements developed by, for example, pharmaceutical corporations.
The United States does support those articles in the Declaration that promote civil and political rights. These rights ensure that “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law” (Article 7) “Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others” (Article 17); “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” (Article 18); and “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression” (Article 19). Basically, these are the individual rights that are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and that lie at the root of the liberal democratic concept of the “rule of law.” And while Human Rights Watch professes to defend the human rights enshrined in the UN Declaration, in reality, its work focuses exclusively on the civil and political rights recognized by the U.S. government.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/14/the-bias-of-human-rights-watch/
Ronald Reagan, Enabler of Atrocities
Ronald Reagan, Enabler of Atrocities
By Robert Parry
February 6, 2011
When you’re listening to the many tributes to President Ronald Reagan, often for his talent making Americans feel better about themselves, you might want to spend a minute thinking about the many atrocities in Latin America and elsewhere that Reagan aided, covered up or shrugged off in his inimitable "aw shucks" manner.
~snip~
Defending Rios Montt
Despite the widespread evidence of Guatemalan government atrocities cited in the internal U.S. government cables, political operatives for the Reagan administration sought to conceal the crimes. On Oct. 22, 1982, for instance, the U.S. Embassy claimed the Guatemalan government was the victim of a communist-inspired "disinformation campaign."
~snip~
During a visit to Central America, on March 10, 1999, President Bill Clinton apologized for the past U.S. support of right-wing regimes in Guatemala.
"For the United States, it is important that I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake," Clinton said.
Though Clinton admitted that U.S. policy in Guatemala was “wrong” -- and the evidence of a U.S.-backed “genocide” might have been considered startling -- the news was treated mostly as a one-day story in the U.S. press. It prompted no panel discussions on the cable news shows that were then obsessed with Clinton’s personal life.
More:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/020611.html
It's a miracle Stroessner was allowed to rule over 35 years. Had he been a leftist, US voices
would have thrown him over in his first term, like Allende. As it was, this Nazi freak tortured, murdered, enslaved Native people, all WITH the U.S. material and spiritual support.
12 ALFREDO STROESSNER
President-for-Life of Paraguay
Alfredo Stroessner came to power in 1954, but European correspondents who visited Paraguay during his rule used the term the "poor man's Nazi regime" to describe the Paraguayan government. The parallels may have been more than a coincidence, for many Nazi war criminals, such as Joseph Mengele, had settled there with Stroessner's blessing.
From the Nazis the Paraguayan military leamed the art of genocide. The native Ache Indians were in the way of progress, progress represented by American and European corporations who planned to exploit the nation's forests, mines, and grazing lands. The Indians were hunted down, parents killed, and children sold into slavery. Survivors were herded into reservations headed by American fundamentalist missionaries , some of whom had participated in the hunts.
Between 1962 and 1975, Paraguay received $146 million in U.S. aid. Paraguayan officials seemingly wanted more, however, for in 1971, high ranking members of the regime were implicated in the Marseilles drug ring, with Paraguay their transfer point for shipments from France to the U.S. In the 1980s America finally condemned Paraguayan civil rights abuses and drug trafficking. Stroessner still looked as if he'd be dictator for life but in 1988 one of his closest generals, Andres Rodriguez, a known drug dealer, took over after a coup. Rodriguez promised to restore democracy, and President Bush called the 1989 elections "a democratic opening," but opponents declared them "a massive fraud." Rodriguez's Colorado party won 74% of the vote.
http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/SouthAmerica.html
[center]~~~~~[/center]
New York Times:
Divisive Candidate in Paraguay Is Killed in Helicopter Crash
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: February 3, 2013
RIO DE JANEIRO — Lino Oviedo, a candidate in Paraguay’s presidential election and one of the country’s most polarizing political figures, was killed in a helicopter crash on Saturday night while returning from a rally in northern Paraguay, government officials said Sunday. The death of Mr. Oviedo, 69, opens new uncertainty in Paraguay, where President Fernando Lugo was ousted last year. After the authorities confirmed Mr. Oviedo’s death and called it an accident, officials in Mr. Oviedo’s party, the National Union of Ethical Citizens, immediately questioned whether he had been assassinated.
~snip~
Mr. Oviedo fled the country in 1999 — seeking exile first in Argentina and then in Brazil — after being charged with organizing an aborted coup in 1996 against Juan Carlos Wasmosy, who was then Paraguay’s president. The authorities also indicted Mr. Oviedo on charges of masterminding the assassination of Vice President Luis María Argaña, who was killed by gunmen outside Asunción, the capital, in March 1999. But after Mr. Oviedo returned to Paraguay in 2004 and served time in prison in connection with the coup plot, Paraguay’s Supreme Court absolved him of the various charges.
~snip~
Paraguay was officially commemorating Mr. Stroessner’s overthrow on Sunday, and some of Mr. Oviedo’s supporters questioned the timing of the helicopter crash, which also killed an aide and the pilot. The Paraguayan aviation authorities said the helicopter went down during a storm in northern Paraguay and said they would investigate the cause of the crash.
“Twenty-four years ago today General Oviedo overthrew the dictatorship,” César Durand, a spokesman for Mr. Oviedo’s party, told Radio Ñanduti. “This is a message from the mafia,” he said, employing a blanket term often used by Paraguayans to refer to shadowy organizations involved in drug trafficking and the smuggling of pirated goods into neighboring Brazil.
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/world/americas/lino-oviedo-candidate-in-paraguay-dies-in-crash.html?_r=0
Klaus Barbie, the Nazi "Butcher of Lyon" and his association with Bolivia's Hugo Banzer.
This is information I just stumbled across, and want to share with DU'ers I respect. It comes from an investigation by Democratic Congresswoman Elizabeth Holzman and Joshua Eilberg:
RECRUITING NAZIS
GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATIONS. Numerous allegations about collaborating with the German Nazis -- during and after World War II -- have been leveled at the CIA.
~snip~
Fifth, the CIA evacuated Nazi war criminals and collaborators through "rat lines" in southern Europe, allowing them to escape justice by relocating them in South America.
~snip~
Seventh, the CIA covered up its these activities from congressional and other federal investigators.
The congressional investigations were launched by Congressmen Joshua Eilberg and Elizabeth Holtzman. After the INS's investigation appeared to be at a standstill. Congress demanded that the GAO determine whether the INS or any other government agency had conspired to obstruct legal action against alleged Nazi war criminals living in the United States. Congress made this request in January 1977, marking the beginning of the first GAO investigation. The Special Litigation Unit, a new office within INS and the immediate predecessor to the OSI, also started its separate investigation at the same time. (www.cia.gov/csi/studies/97unclass/naziwar)
~snip~
KLAUS BARBIE: THE BUTCHER OF LYON." The greatest asset to American security forces was Nazi officer Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon." He worked his way up the Gestapo ladder during World War II. After the German occupation of France in 1942, Hitler named him commander of the SS office in Lyons in 1942 where he ordered the murder of 4,000 Jews. After the war concluded, Barbie was charged with war crimes at Nurenberg. Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, formerly a Wall Street attorney, intervened in the executions of some convicted Nurenberg criminals. He arranged to have Barbie sheltered from prosecution by the 970th Counterintelligence Corps at Oberamergau. McCloy's motives were clear. He represented Standard Oil and Chase Manhatten Bank which were big investors in Nazi Germany. Before the war, McCloy was the legal adviser to I.G. Farben, the German chemical conglomerate, many of whose officials were elevated to high positions by Hitler. The company also prospered from Jewish slave labor at Auswitz and other concentration camps.
Barbie was quickly picked up by the CIC and put on their payroll. According to Klaus' CIA file which was declassified on April 27, 2001, his job was to keep track of communists. The CIC protected him from French prosecution. A 1967 American Army document, declassified on April 27, 2001, said, "Exposure of Counterintelligence Command's role in evacuating him from Germany to avoid prosecution would have serious consequences for the U.S. government."
~snip~
By the early 1960s, the CIA recruited Bolivian General Rene Barrientos Ortuno who, in turn, launched an attack on the presidential palace in 1964. Paz fled the country, and the CIA placed General Rene Barrientos Ortuno in power. The American government sent in troops to assure control as well as bringing 1,600 military officers back to the United States for training. This group included the top 23 Bolivian Army generals. The French continued their hunt for Barbie, but the United States government denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. Barrientos placed Barbie on his Department 4, his internal security force, and Barbie was put in charge of planning counterinsurgency operations. When Bolivian tin miners walked out and struck again, Barbie quickly responded by using Nazi techniques of interrogation, torture, and murder. Over 100 miners were killed by Department 4 troopers. Barbie extended his terrorist tactics when he launched an attack against Bolivian Indian tribes whom he considered genetically and culturally inferior.
~snip~
In 1969, Barrientos ironically was killed when his Gulf Oil helicopter crashed, and he was succeeded by General Ovando Candia and after one year by General Juan Jose Torres. However, Torres turned out to be a populist and exiled Cuban refugee Che Guevara and nationalizing foreign multinational corporations which included Gulf Oil. Therefore, the CIA had to strike once again. In a 1970 coup, Torres was overthrown and was replaced with Hugo Banzer Suarez who had been trained at the School of the Americas in Panama. Immediately, Bolivia's universities were shut down and violent methods were carried out against leftist resistors.
In 1970, Hugo Banzer Suarez seized power, and Barbie stayed on to run his security division. In addition, Barbie continued to pocket millions of dollars from his drug enterprise and well as from his lucrative arms business. While Suarez oversaw a fast growing billion dollar drug trade, former Nazi Hugo Banzer and two top Army generals were actively involved in the trade. By the early 1970s, Bolivia controlled 80 percent of the world's coca fields, and most was exported to Colombian cartel laboratories including Barbie's Transmaritania.
More:
http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/Book14Ch.3.html
(Some of you may recall our excellent DU friend "rabs", who lived and studied and worked all over South America for many years, who has close and extended family living there still, and maintains contact with them all, and with friends there, had a LOT of information about this subject when he used to post here. He knew a great deal about them.
He is completely rare, wildly more informed than any poster on this subject I have ever known.)
More:
http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/Book14Ch.3.html
[center]~~~~~[/center]
In pursuit of Bolivia's secret Nazi
After the second world war many high-ranking Nazis fled to South America. Among them was the head of the Gestapo in the French city of Lyon, a man responsible for the deportation of Jews to the death camp at Auschwitz and the torture of members of the French Resistance. Hiding in Bolivia, Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, changed his name to Klaus Altmann and made himself helpful to drug lords and dictators alike. Bolivian journalist Gustavo Sanchez explains what happened when he tracked Barbie down in 1983
Weekly, Wednesday 10 September 2008 04.00 EDT
[font size=1]
German SS officer and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.
Photograph: Gabriel Hackett/Getty[/font]
For decades here in Bolivia we had an infamous tradition of ruthless dictators. In the early 70s General Hugo Banzer siezed power. He turned to the ex-Nazi Klaus Barbie to help him with the repression. It was not the first time that Barbie, a war criminal wanted by the French and German authorities, had mingled with hardliners. Here in Bolivia he used to do big business with the drug lords. He had his own team of assassins, some from Italy and others from Argentina, called the Grooms of Death. He also sold them weapons.
American intelligence officials helped Barbie to become established in Bolivia as part of their crusade against communism. He acted as a sort of counter-intelligence official. Under the alias of Klaus Altmann he worked primarily as an interrogator and torturer. He also helped in the same way in Peru. He did the same things here as in Germany and France. For him the word communist meant "dead". Many Bolivians died during that dictatorship; one that was prolonged for more than 10 years. Barbie was in charge of the murders of many Bolivian citizens, including priests and members of the opposition.
So some of us felt that we had to do something about it. But in 1980, after General Banzer, an even bloodier dictator, Luis García Meza, rose to power in what was called the narco, or cocaine, coup. Barbie was a key aide then. He was the main ideologue of that coup; he organised absolutely everything. He was even given the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Bolivian armed forces, and was then able to move around with total impunity. Today Bolivians know all about Barbie, but for a long time many even doubted that such a criminal could be here.
I was kind of obsessed with Barbie since the beginning. In the 70s, when I was in Chile with the Marxist Régis Debray and the Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, we masterminded a plan to kidnap Barbie. But we failed. Back then I was a simple leftist journalist, who was on very bad terms with the dictators' regimes – I knew that if I stayed I would be killed. I was in Chile until General Pinochet took over, then in Argentina until the junta took over, and finally in Cuba, until Bolivia's return to democracy in 1982 under Hernán Siles Suazo.
More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/10/bolivia-germany
[center]~~~~~[/center]
There's so much to learn if and when you might decide to launch your own search on this absolute monster, and right-wing mass murderer, Klaus Barbie, and his connection to the right-wing goblins in the US-assisted reigns of terror in Bolivia.
Uribe admits receiving 'help' from Drummond .
Source: Colombia Reports
Uribe admits receiving 'help' from Drummond .
Monday, 19 November 2012 09:30 Caitlin Trent
Colombia's former President Alvaro Uribe admitted Sunday to receiving "help" from U.S. coal company Drummond while in office.
Although direct payments from Drummond to Uribe's lawyer remain unconfirmed, in an interview Sunday with news broadcast Noticias Uno ex-president Uribe admitted to accepting unspecified "help" from the American coal giant.
The murky ties between Uribe and Drummond came to light two years ago when Uribe was subpoenaed as a witness to Drummond's alleged paramilitary ties with paramilitary organization AUC.
The ex-president however received immunity from testifying last year while being defended by prominent lawyer Gregory Craig whose legal fees are speculated to be paid for by Drummond.
Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/27068-uribe-receiving-help-from-drummond.html
Drummond paid to kill unionists: Ex-paramilitary .
Wednesday, 14 March 2012 14:00 Mary Cecelia Bittner
A former paramilitary has testified before a U.S. court that coal giant Drummond Ltd. paid paramilitaries $1.5 million to murder union leaders, Colombian media reported Tuesday.
Alcides Mattos Tabares, alias "El Samario," claimed that as part of the Northern Bloc of the AUC he took part in the murdering of employees ordered by Drummond.
Drummond's union president and vice president, Valmore Locarno and Victor Hugo Orcasita, "had" to be killed because they were organizing a strike that would have generated losses for the company, said Tabares.
From 2002 until his 2005 capture, Tabares patrolled Drummond’s railway lines, where he participated in killings, sometimes directed by Drummond employees, he claimed. He spoke of the trade unionists' murder saying,"I was not exactly the shooter, but I participated in the event as [paramilitay commander] 'Tolemaida's' security chief."
More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/22827-drummond-paid-to-kill-unionists-ex-paramilitary.html
[center]
[/center]
Google using 3-wheeled bike to add panoramic views of Mayan ruins to ‘Street View’ feature
Google using 3-wheeled bike to add panoramic views of Mayan ruins to ‘Street View’ feature
By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, August 16, 5:23 PM
MEXICO CITY — Google is adding interactive images of dozens of pre-Hispanic ruins to the “Street View” feature on its Google Maps website.
Google Mexico and Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History announced Thursday that 30 sites have been added to Street View, and dozens more will be coming online this year. The eventual goal is 90 sites.
The feature allows users to click on map locations to obtain 360-degree, interactive images composed of millions of photos taken at street level by specially equipped vehicles. Google uses a special, three-wheeled bicycle to generate images of the Mexican sites, many of which don’t have paved areas.
The sites already online include Chichen Itza, Teotihuacan and Monte Alban.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/google-using-3-wheeled-bike-to-add-panoramic-views-of-mayan-ruins-to-street-view-feature/2012/08/16/ffa45c7a-e7f0-11e1-9739-eef99c5fb285_story.html
(Short article, no more at link.)
[center]
Chichen Itza
Teotihuacan
Monte Alban[/center]
Hoping whoever sees the google photos will post them A.S.A.P.! Should be wonderful.
Article in Colombia's newspaper, El Tiempo, re: former para's court testimony:
Murder Training: Colombian Death Squad Used Live Hostages
April 29, 2007 By El Tiempo
El Tiempo, Bogota -- "Proof of courage": that is how the how the paramilitaries would term the training they imparted to their recruits so that they learnt how to carve up people while they were still alive.
Initially, the authorities rejected this version of the farmers who reported the practice... but when the combatants themselves started to admit to it in their testimonies before the prosecutors, the myth became a harsh crime against humanity.
Francisco Enrique Villalba Hernández (alias Cristian Barreto), one of the perpetrators of the massacre at El Aro in Ituango, Antioquia, received this type of training in the same place where he learnt to handle arms and manufacture home-made bombs. Today, a prisoner at La Picota in Bogota, Villalba has described in details during lengthy testimonies how he applied the learning.
"Towards the middle of 1994, I was ordered to a course... in El Tomate, Antioquia, where the training camp was located," he says in his testimony. There, his working day started at 5 in the morning and the instructions were received directly from the top commanders such as 'Double Zero' (Carlos Garcia, since assassinated by another paramilitary group).
Villalba claims that in order to learn how to dismember people they would use farmers they gathered together in the course of taking neighbouring settlements. As he describes it, "they were aged people whom we brought in trucks, alive and bound up". The victims arrived at the ranch in covered trucks. They were lowered from the vehicle with their hands tied and taken to a room. There they were locked up for days in the hope that the training would start.
More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/murder-training-colombian-death-squad-used-live-hostages-by-el-tiempo
[center]
Former AUC, Francisco Enrique Villalba.[/center]
Material from a testimony by this man, Francisco Villaba, former death squad member. He was murdered not too long ago, after he had testified in court regarding his participation in AUC (right-wing paramillitary) activities:
Details of testimony that involves Uribe in a massacre
Posted on June 20, 2008 by csn
http://colombiasupport.net/2008/06/details-of-testimony-that-involves-uribe-in-a-massacre
(Very, very graphic. Horrendous.)
Paramilitaries said 1997 massacre was 'well coordinated' with army: US cable . (Colombia)
Source: Colombia Reports
Paramilitaries said 1997 massacre was 'well coordinated' with army: US cable .
Wednesday, 18 July 2012 09:31 Adriaan Alsema
Members of paramilitary organization AUC told the U.S. embassy that the 1997 Mapiripan massacre in central Colombia was "well coordinated in advance" with (elements of) the army, according to a released diplomatic cable.
The State Department document was declassified and published Tuesday by the National Security Archive, a non-profit organization dedicated to declassifying U.S. government documents.
According to the embassy's anonymous sources, the army provided "travel, logistics, intelligence and security" to the paramilitary who killed dozens of civilians in the five days after their July 15 incursion of the town.
~snip~
The identification of the victims has been complicated as the paramilitaries cut up the majority of their remains and threw them in a nearby river.
Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/25133-paramilitaries-said-1997-massacre-was-well-coordinated-with-army-us-cable.html
Uribe conspired with paramilitaries: AUC commander .
Source: Colombia Reports
Uribe conspired with paramilitaries: AUC commander . (U.S. ally)
Wednesday, 11 July 2012 11:11 Esteban Manriquez
One of the paramilitary AUC's most prominent ex-commanders accused Colombia's former President Alvaro Uribe of collaborating with armed militias.
Ever Veloza, alias “H.H.,” told U.S. prosecutors that Uribe developed ties with the paramilitary group AUC during his tenure as governor of the Antioquia department from 1995-1997. According to H.H., Carlos Castaño, one of the founders of the AUC, used pagers to keep in contact with officials in the Antioquian government. Uribe used one of these pagers to secretly communicate with Castaño, said the extradited commander.
~snip~
Uribe is one of hundreds of politicians implicated in what's called "parapolitics."
Since 2006, 38 congressmen and five governors have been convicted for conspiring with paramilitary groups to get elected into office, reap financial rewards and intimidate opponents. Some 140 more former congressmen have pending investigations against them. Although many of these “parapoliticians” were allies of the Uribe administration, the former president himself has so far escaped indictment. According to the Prosecutor General's Office, more than 11,000 politicians, public officials, members of the military and businessmen collaborated with the organization that was determined a terrorist organization until its official demobilization between 2003 and 2006.
Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/25032-uribe-conspired-with-paramilitary-auc-commander.html
(Colombia's paramilitaries, which officially ended, have regrouped under different names, as noted by groups like Amnesty International. They have always been identified as right-wing narcotrafficking death squads responsible for "the lion's share" of extreme violence against citizens in Colombia.)
There was a clear difference between the position taken by Carter and Clinton on Guatemala vs Reagan
Very quick example, using the example from this article:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_Guat.html
Jennifer Harbury vs. the US government
In 1995, US policy toward Guatemala was driven by the unprecedented public attention to the plight of US citizen Jennifer Harbury, the wife of disappeared guerrilla leader Efrain Bamaca. In 1992, Bamaca was captured and murdered. His wife, American attorney Jennifer Harbury, waged an impassioned campaign to find her husband and bring his killers to justice. Her hunger strikes first in Guatemala City and then in front of the White House, touched a chord among Americans. Representative Robert Toricelli of the House Intelligence Committee revealed that both Michael DeVine and Efrain Bamaca had been executed on the orders of Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, who had been on the CIA payroll for years, and had been trained at the School of the Americas.
Harbury's struggle against the lies, intimidation, and cover-up mounted by the Guatemalan authorities brought to US public attention a reality all too familiar to Guatemalans. In addition, her pressure for answers from the US government prompted the unraveling of a series of revelations about the CIA's secret assistance to abusive military institutions and officers in Guatemala. The scandal revealed a secret policy that for many years had made all but irrelevant Washington's public postures on human rights in Guatemala. In the cascade of revelations, it became clear the CIA had secretly provided millions of dollars in assistance to Guatemala's G-2 unit, even after the US government cut-off of overt military aid and sales in 1990.
In March 1995, the Clinton Administration, as a result of Jennifer Harbury's hunger strike in front of the White House, suspended military training for Guatemalan Army officers. Shortly thereafter, Clinton ordered most of the CIA's assistance to the Guatemalan military suspended, except for anti-narcotics funding. The Intelligence Oversight Board (it had never before been convened) was convened at the end of 1995, but its report was a whitewash, concluding that "No evidence has been found that any employee of the CIA in any way directed, participated in or condoned the murder of Michael DeVine." Perhaps, Alpirez was not considered an "employee" even though he was on the CIA payroll. It seems certain that there will be a similar finding in the Bamaca execution as well.
Several millions of dollars in military aid cut off in 1990 by the Bush administration, was channeled by Clinton into a peace fund to support the work of the MINUGUA human rights verification mission.
[center]
[font size=1]Jennifer Harbury and Carol DeVine, the widows of Efrain Velasquez and Michael DeVine
respectively, testify in Congress about the CIA's involvement in the murders of their husbands.[/font]
THE CIA IN GUATEMALA: THE LESSER KNOWN HOLOCAUST
"We have no scorched earth policy. We have a scorched Communist policy."
Guatemalan President RIOS MONTT
"The military guys who do this are like serial killers. If Jeffrey Dahmer
had been in Guatemala, he would be a general by now."
- CLYDE SNOW, forensic anthropologist
[/center]
Compared to the struggles against state tyranny in other Central American countries, very little is heard of Guatemala in the Western media. This is because the level of repression is extremely high; Guatemala has suffered the worst record of human rights abuses in Latin America. During three decades, hundreds of thousands of people have been massacred during their struggle against a government that has been armed and trained by the U.S.
~snip~
Anyone attempting to organise a union or simply suspected of being in support of the resistance was a target. Armed men broke into their homes and dragged them away. The abducted were tortured, mutilated or burned; their bodies were found buried in mass graves or floating in plastic bags in lakes or rivers, or lying beside the road. Bodies were dropped into the Pacific from airplanes. In the Gualan area, it was said, no one fished any more because too many corpses were caught in the nets. In Guatemala City, right wing terrorists machine-gunned people and houses in daylight. Journalists, lawyers, students, teachers, trade unionists, members of opposition parties, anyone who helped or expressed sympathy for the rebel cause, anyone with a vaguely leftist political association or a moderate criticism of government policy and relatives of the victims were all targets for attack.
"It is hard to find the words to express the state of putrefaction that exists in
Guatemala, and the permanent terror in which the inhabitants live. Every day
bodies are pulled out of the Motagua River, riddled with bullets and partially
eaten by fish. Every day men are kidnapped right in the street by unidentified
people in cars, armed to the teeth, with no intervention by the police patrols."
- from the notebook of MICHELE KIRK, a young French woman who shot
herself in Guatemala City as the police came to her room to make "inquiries."
The U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) contributed to a programme to greatly expand the size of Guatemala's national police force and to develop it into a professional body skilled at counteracting urban disorder. Additionally, the police force was completely supplied with radio patrol cars and a radio communications network and funds to build a national police academy and pay for salaries, uniforms, weapons and equipment.
More:
http://www.american-buddha.com/cia.guatemala.htm
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