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Robert Torricelli, and Allan Nairn, Nairn being a brave journalist who had the guts to speak truth to Elliot Abrams power during the show. Here's a glimpse: Guatemala Massacre
Excerpts from "Charlie Rose," March 31, 1995 Guests: Rep. Robert Torricelli, Elliot Abrams, Allan Nairn
This may not be news to most Deep Times readers, but it is a conveniently packaged interview that might be effective with students when discussing "human rights" and imperialism. The massacre in Guatemala of 100,000 is on a proportionate scale, equivalent to TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND Tienamien Square incidents. That's 25,000 times as many deaths, in relation to the size of the country, and of course, students know quite a bit more about the China incident than they do about Guatemala. -----(forwarded by Alan Spector) (snip)
Nairn: Across the board. And in the face of this systematic policy of slaughter by the Guatemalan military, more than 110,000 civilians killed by that military since 1978, what Amnesty International has called a "government program of political murder," the US has continued to provide covert assistance to the G-2 and they have continued, especially during the time of Mr. Abrams, to provide political aid and comfort. For example,
Abrams: Uh, Charlie.
Rose: One second.
Nairn: during the Northwest Highland massacres of the '80s when the Catholic Church said: "never in our history has it come to such grave extremes. It has reached the point of genocide," President Reagan went down, embraced Rios Montt, the dictator who was staging these massacres, and said he was getting "a bum rap on human rights." In 85 when human rights leader Rosario Godoy was abducted by the army, raped and mutilated, her baby had his fingernails torn out, the Guatemalan military said: "Oh, they died in a traffic accident." Human rights groups contacted Mr. Abrams, asked him about it, he wrote back -- this is his letter of reply -- he said: yes, "there's no evidence other than that they died in a traffic accident." Now this is a woman raped and mutilated, a baby with his fingernails torn out. This is longstanding policy. (snip) http://www.copi.com/articles/guatmala.html~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~For any DU'ers who read the transcript who haven't heard of "Bamaca" (as I hadn't until a couple of years ago, and heard it first from DU'er Say_What, I'm glad to say) I should say I have seen his widow, Jennifer Harbury, on C-Span, along with another woman, a nun, Diana Ortiz, with whom she wrote her last book, and started trying to keep her name in mind from that time onward. Here's a transcript to an interview she gave to Amy Goodman: Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 Wife of Guatemalan Rebel Killed by CIA Asset Says CIA Operatives Engaged in Criminal Acts Should be Exposed
AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Harbury, you took a case against the U.S. government to the Supreme Court. You fasted endlessly in both Guatemala and the United States to find out what had happened to your husband. Can you talk about what happened in taking on the U.S. government, how ultimately, you found out what happened to Everardo, what happened to your husband Ephraim Bamaca Velasquez?
JENNIFER HARBURY: Well, I first, of course, had been told by the Guatemalan military that he had shot himself in combat to avoid being captured alive. Six months later, a young prisoner of war for the first time was able to escape from a Guatemalan military base and explain to me that he had not been killed in combat, he was captured alive, that they had fabricated this story about his combat death in order to torture him long-term for his information. And in fact, they had doctors present -- because of his great intelligence value, they had doctors present to make sure they didn't accidentally kill him. They then opened the grave and found the body of a very different young man, a young soldier who had been killed as a decoy.
For the next two-and-a-half years, I carried out efforts with the O.A.S. I went to the United Nations. I went everywhere and got no results. No one was able to force the Guatemalan military or the U.S. State Department to carry out any serious actions. And the Embassy, the U.S. Embassy told me and also sent form letters repeatedly to concerned members all over Capitol Hill, representatives and senators, that there was no information at all about him.
After my third hunger strike, it was, of course, disclosed that the C.I.A. had known from the week of his capture that (a) he had been captured, (b) they were faking his death, and (c) they were torturing him. And that memo went straight to the State Department. We also found out that when I first started looking for him and was opening the grave with the State Department and embassy sending people to stand next to me, they knew he was still alive and that so were 350 other prisoners of war in Guatemalan military hands and, in fact, they also knew that he was in the hands of our own paid informants whom we could have, of course, pulled into line. In other words, at that point in time, we could have saved 350 lives, including my husband's. During all of my efforts they continued to tell me and to tell the United States Congress and Amnesty, etc., etc., that there was no information. (snip/...) http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/27/1422249
Jennifer Harburyhttp://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/cityweek/Content?oid=oid:65054Article on Harbury on a book tour to Tucson. Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 Jennifer Harbury on Why Guatemalan Villagers Refuse Military Aid in Mudslide, Remembering Decades of Torture and Massacres http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/12/1416231~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~On Allan Nairn, the journalist in the Charlie Rose interview:
Allan Nairn From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Allan NairnAllan Nairn (b. 1956) is a U.S. investigative journalist who became well-known when he was imprisoned by the Indonesian military while reporting in East Timor. His writings have focused on U.S. foreign policy in such countries as Haiti, Guatemala, Indonesia, and East Timor.
Nairn was born in Mobile, Alabama to a Puerto Rican mother. In high school, he got a job with consumer activist Ralph Nader, working for him for six years.
In 1980, Nairn visited Guatemala in the middle of a campaign of assassination against student leaders amidst a chaotic counterinsurgency campaign against Marxist guerrillas active in both urban and rural areas. He interviewed U.S. corporate executives there, who endorsed the death squads, and he decided to further investigate death squad activities in that country and in El Salvador, also in the throes of civil war. (snip/...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Nairn
Sister Diana OrtizJanuary 29 / 30, 2005 A Note to Bush from a Survivor of Guatemalan Torturers Stop the Torture By Sister DIANNA ORTIZ On Thursday, January 20, I listened to George W. Bush take the oath of office as President. He made many promises. One promise he did not make is to end the torture his administration has not only tolerated but facilitated. It left me wondering what his promises to uphold the law and fight for freedom and liberty really mean. I am a survivor of torture. On November 2, 1989, I was abducted by members of the Guatemalan security forces. I am still talking today about the torture that followed because it is with me at every moment. I carry it with me physically"I wear in my skin the marks of 111 cigarette burns. But the scars go as deep as my very being. I was tortured for twenty-four hours, and in that time who I was, who I had been for 31 years, died. I was a nun, a missionary, a teacher of children. But now there was no God. People could not be trusted. And I could not trust myself. Those were the lessons I learned. But in that clandestine prison there was one person who reached out to me, a woman who had also been tortured. She asked me my name and took my hand. I made a silent promise to her that, if I managed to survive, I would tell the world what had been done in that secret prison, to her and to others. I would not let her simply vanish, as tens of thousands had at the hands of the Guatemalan army. I honored my promise. I spoke out about my torture and filed criminal charges in a futile effort to obtain justice in Guatemala. I called on the U.S. government to reveal information about the American who entered the secret prison, ordered my torturers to let me go, and escorted me out. Who was he? How did he know the location of a secret torture center? Why did the Guatemalan torturers obey him, as if he were their boss? Why did he leave all the others there, under torture? (snip/...) http://www.counterpunch.org/ortiz01292005.html
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