Spain may judge Guatemala (civil war) abuses (BBC News)

[Up2Late]

(Hummm, wasn't the CIA involved in Guatemala's civil war?)

Wednesday, 5 October 2005, 17:34 GMT 18:34 UK

Spain may judge Guatemala abuses

Thousands of disappearances and killings committed during Guatemala's civil war may be judged in Spanish courts after a change in the law.

Spain's highest court ruled that cases of genocide committed abroad could be judged in Spain even if no Spanish citizens have been involved. The ruling follows a request by a Guatemalan Nobel prize winner for Spain to probe abuses in the 1970s and 1980s.

The decision overruled a rejection of the request by Spain's lower courts. The Constitutional Court ruled that: "The principle of universal jurisdiction takes precedence over the existence or not of national interests.

"Spain should investigate crimes of genocide, torture, murder and illegal imprisonment committed in Guatemala between 1978 and 1986." Around 200,000 people were killed during that time, according to the case filed by Nobel peace prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, a campaigner for indigenous rights.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4313664.stm>
(more at link above)

[Up2Late]

1. kick n/t

:kick:

[wordout]

2. kick ass! n/t

[Judi Lynn]

3. Here's a description of what happened in Guatemala during the time

cited above. It's very ugly, and certain parties in this country participated:

Life expectancy in Guatemala is 41 and one child in 5 dies before its 4th birthday, one in ten before its first and only one child in 3 lives to celebrate its 15th birthday. Descendents of the Spanish form the ruling minority in Guatemala. Forming only 2.1% of the population, these descendents own 70% of arable land and are in charge of the military. 70% of Guatemala's population are South American Indians. They live in the northern provinces near the boarder to Mexico. The Indians continue to be driven from their land today. They have no documentation proving that they are the rightful owners of the land. The Indians regard the land as mother earth providing the people with plenty to eat. Their ancestors are also buried under this earth meaning that expulsion from their land means much more than just an economic disaster...

Peaceful attempts by Indians to protest their right to land have been met with violent massacres on several occasions. The strength of the army was increased fourfold between 1973-1988, when young Indians were forced into joining the army brutally to hunt down and exterminate their own kind as "misguided communists".
(snip)

Under the military dictatorship of Lucas Garcia (1978-1982) and Rios Montt (1982-1983) a stage-by-stage counter insurgency plan drawn up by the CIA was implemented. This was an open war against the civil population and is now described in history books as the "scorched earth policy". The army caused a mass exodus of people into neighboring countries (especially Mexico) by carrying out mass shootings and pyres, by cruelly torturing people and by completely destroying and burning down some 440 Indio villages. The horrors committed are almost unimaginable: The stomachs of pregnant women were cut open, and the heads of children were smashed against rocks...

"The results" of the military repression between 1978-1986: 150 000 killed, 46 000 disappeared, 300 000 orphans. These figures are "very high" even for Latin America. Counter insurgency measures also included the setting up of so-called "model villages", where Indians lived in a sort of safety zone, surrounded, controlled and monitored by the military.
(snip/...)

http://www.dadalos.org/int/Vorbilder/Vorbilder/Rigoberta/hintergrund.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Guatemala has endured a vicious 36-year epidemic of death squads, dirty wars, disappearances, and kidnappings.
“Guatemala is one of the world’s most violent societies. There is no country in this hemisphere that surpasses Guatemala’s homicide and disappearance rates. Saving the country from communism and self-interest blended to form a psychology conducive to supporting physical repression of workers and peasants in the name of anti-communism.” – Secret Report, U.S. State Department, Guatemala’s Disappeared: 1977-86, March 28, 1986

In March 1999, President William Clinton became the first president to admit US role in slaughter of thousands of civilians in 36-year civil war.
(snip/...)http://www.flashpoints.info/countries-conflicts/Guatemala-web/Guatemala_briefing_main.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reagan & Guatemala’s Death Files

By Robert Parry

~ snip ~
After four years of Jimmy Carter's human rights nagging, the region's anticommunist hard-liners were thrilled that they had someone in the White House who understood their problems.
(snip)

In the late 1970s, when Carter's human rights coordinator, Pat Derian, criticized the Argentine military for its "dirty war" -- tens of thousands of "disappearances," tortures and murders -- then-political commentator Reagan joshed that she should "walk a mile in the moccasins” of the Argentine generals before criticizing them.

Despite his aw shucks style, Reagan found virtually every anticommunist action justified, no matter how brutal. From his eight years in the White House, there is no historical indication that he was troubled by the bloodbath and even genocide that occurred in Central America during his presidency, while he was shipping hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the implicated forces.

The death toll was staggering -- an estimated 70,000 or more political killings in El Salvador, possibly 20,000 slain from the contra war in Nicaragua, about 200 political "disappearances" in Honduras and some 100,000 people eliminated during a resurgence of political violence in Guatemala.
(snip)

The report added that the "government of the United States, through various agencies including the CIA, provided direct and indirect support for some state operations." The report concluded that the U.S. government also gave money and training to a Guatemalan military that committed "acts of genocide" against the Mayans.

"Believing that the ends justified everything, the military and the state security forces blindly pursued the anticommunist struggle, without respect for any legal principles or the most elemental ethical and religious values, and in this way, completely lost any semblance of human morals," said the commission chairman, Christian Tomuschat, a German jurist.

"Within the framework of the counterinsurgency operations carried out between 1981 and 1983, in certain regions of the country agents of the Guatemalan state committed acts of genocide against groups of the Mayan people,” he added.
(snip/...)

http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/052699a1.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Distributed to Newspapers on Monday, June 7, 2004 by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services
Ronald Reagan's Legacy
by Mark Weisbrot

~ snip ~
Mr. Reagan is often credited with having caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, but this is doubtful. He did use the Cold War as a pretext for other interventions, including funding and support for horrific violence against the civilian population of Central America. In 1999 the United Nations determined that the massacres of tens of thousands of Guatemalans, mostly indigenous people, constituted "genocide." These massacres -- often involving grotesque torture -- reached their peak under the rule of Mr. Reagan's ally, the Guatemalan General Rios Montt. Tens of thousands of Salvadorans were also murdered during Mr. Reagan's presidency by death squads affiliated with the U.S.-funded Salvadoran military.
(snip/...)

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0607-09.htm

[struggle4progress]

4. Court gives Spanish judiciary right to try any foreign genocide

Ruling reverses decision that permitted only trials of violations that involved Spaniards

El Pais Spain | M. ELKIN
Madrid

The Constitutional Court, Spain's highest court, ruled on Wednesday that the Spanish justice system has the authority to try crimes of genocide and human rights violations even if there were no Spanish victims involved, reversing a decision handed down earlier this year by the Supreme Court.

The ruling ends the six-year legal battle initiated by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberto Menchú to spur the Spanish courts into investigating the murders, torture and illegal arrests that blighted Guatemala between 1978 and 1986. According to the lawsuit, during that time the Guatemalan military perpetrated 626 massacres in Mayan Indians communities suspected of opposing the government.

Over the past years, several Spanish judges, notably Baltasar Garzón, have investigated human rights crimes in other countries that included Spaniards, notably the landmark case against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. In April, the High Court sentenced a former Argentine navy captain, Adolfo Scilingo, to 640 years in prison for crimes against humanity - Spain's first guilty verdict for such crimes committed in another country.

Scilingo was found guilty of participating in Argentina's 1976-1983 "dirty war," led by the military junta against suspected left-wing dissidents. The court convicted him of helping to kill 30 people on two so-called death-flights in 1977, in which drugged and naked prisoners were thrown from planes into the Atlantic Ocean. Under Spanish law, the maximum term Scilingo will serve in prison is 30 years. <snip>

http://www.iht.com/getina/files/280657.html