Soldiers' arrest marks shift in Guatemala
Published: October 21, 2012
By ROMINA
RUIZ-GOIRIENA — Associated Press
GUATEMALA CITY — Chanting and
waving signs to protest high electricity prices, thousands of
unarmed indigenous demonstrators blockaded a highway in western
Guatemala, forcing a standoff with police. Two truckloads of
soldiers arrived and gunfire erupted, killing eight protesters and
wounding 34.
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What happened next after the Oct. 4 incident was virtually
unprecedented in a country scarred by decades of civil war as well as
violence against its indigenous majority and years of impunity for its
powerful military. Authorities actually investigated the violence, and
the alleged perpetrators were arrested.
The country's attorney general, a former human rights activist known
for her bold pursuit of criminals, dispatched at least 175 prosecutors
and investigators to the scene, and many of them collected shells, blood
samples and DNA evidence. Others travelled to two nearby hospitals to
interview wounded demonstrators and witnesses.
Within a week, prosecutors had detained eight army privates and a
colonel on criminal charges. Two privates and the colonel could each
face a maximum penalty of 500 years in prison for extrajudicial
assassination while six privates could face up to 320 years each for
attempted murder with intent. An accompanying report said soldiers had
ignored police instructions to stay away from the protest.
The soldiers involved were not recipients of any U.S. aid or training
in a Central American country in which the United States has spent $85
million fighting drug traffickers since the civil war ended in 1996.
President Otto Perez Molina pushed to end an earlier U.S. ban on
military aid that was imposed during the conflict over concerns about
human rights abuses. To fight the drug trafficking problem, Perez has
since approved the creation of two new military bases and the upgrading
of a third to add as many as 2,500 soldiers. He's also signed a treaty
allowing a team of 200 U.S. Marines to patrol Guatemala's western coast
to catch drug shipments.
Perez, a former army general who's been investigated for human rights
abuses during the country's civil war, lent his support to the
investigation into the shooting of protesters earlier this month, saying
he would accept the attorney general's actions. He also pledged never to
use troops again to quell the protests, blockades and land takeovers
frequently employed by Guatemala's mostly poor majority to denounce
government policy.
Outside observers said the prosecution, after a series of government
attempts to exculpate the soldiers, is largely attributable to the
political power of Claudia Paz y Paz, 46, an aggressive attorney general
who enjoys support from the U.S. and other countries that provide
essential aid to Guatemala. That's given her the clout to face down the
president and the military and ward off obvious attempt to thwart or
quash her prosecution.
Within 24 hours of the shooting outside the town of Totonicapan, Paz
had deployed prosecutors from five offices spanning three different
states, crime scene specialists and investigators. The overwhelming
majority of the teams had received international training funded by the
Spanish and Canadian governments, said Jose Arturo Aguilar, the attorney
general's secretary of strategic and private affairs.
"The role of the public ministry is to consolidate justice as a
fundamental mechanism for strengthening our democracy," Paz told The
Associated Press.
A spokesman for Perez said his acceptance of the prosecutor's actions
showed his commitment to reforming a country marred by corruption and
impunity.
"The president's reaction ratifies his promise of strengthening the
rule of law that will fortify Guatemala's democracy," spokesman
Francisco Cuevas said.
Guatemala has widespread institutional corruption, "including
unlawful killings, drug trafficking, and extortion; and widespread
societal violence, including violence against women and numerous
killings, many related to drug trafficking," according to a recent State
Department report.
Experts said the president's recent actions mark a dramatic shift in
a country once known for its reluctance to punish its military. In fact,
the prosecutions are the first of troops accused of illegally
suppressing protests since the end of Guatemala's civil war in 1996.
"It is an important departure from Guatemala's long history of
impunity for similar crimes," said Kelsey Alford-Jones, director of the
Washington-based nonprofit group Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA.
"Justice in this case, along with the demilitarization of citizen
security, will be a significant step toward ensuring non-violent
resolution of social conflict in the future."
Protester representatives called the prosecution a step forward but
told local media that they still wanted to see the interior minister and
defense minister resign.
Since assuming leadership of the public ministry in 2010, Paz has
vigorously pursued military officials and other suspects, putting four
civil war-era generals on the stand for crimes against humanity and
genocide charges after their cases stalled for decades. She's also
pushed for international training of prosecutors to carry out
science-based prosecutions.
"We're now seeing the successes of the public ministry. It is an
institution that is acting with autonomy," said Marlies Statters,
director of Impunity Watch, an international watchdog organization that
monitors whether governments comply with legal obligations to crime
victims.
The real test for Paz and her prosecutors will be parlaying the
arrests into just trials, said Anita Isaacs, a longtime Guatemala
scholar and a professor of political science at Haverford College in
Pennsylvania. She pointed out that the public ministry belongs to a
judicial system still considered highly inefficient and, in many ways,
corrupt.
Paz, for one, appears to be taking that charge seriously. Her
aggressive prosecutions and reputation for staying above corruption have
won her the backing of the U.S. government, which provides millions in
aid to Guatemala and has some 200 marines in the country on anti-drug
missions. Paz is the only senior Guatemalan official to have met with
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Diplomatic insiders say the U.S. has made no secret of its insistence
that Perez keep Paz, support the CICIG and reform the country's weak
national justice system.
"Claudia Paz is backed by the international community because of her
efficiency and professionalism. That's something President Otto Perez
Molina recognizes and respects, too," said Rene Mauricio Valdes,
resident coordinator of the United Nations in Guatemala.
Military action against civilians is a highly sensitive topic in a
country scarred by a 36-year war between right-wing paramilitary groups
and Marxist guerrillas that led to the deaths of some 200,000 people
-most of them Mayan Indians. Many were raped, tortured and executed in
mass killings.
Meanwhile, conservative voices, mostly from Guatemala's business
elite, warned against comparing the protester shooting outside the town
of Totonicapan to the civil war.
"We must be calm and be mindful not to use this event to rehash the
past," said Andres Castillo, president of the Coordinating Committee of
Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Businesses. His
office filed an official complaint with the public ministry that the
indigenous groups were violating members' right of movement by
blockading the highway.
Guatemala has also long been under international pressure to bring
those responsible for war crimes to justice. A 2006 treaty-level
agreement with the United Nations created the International Commission
against Impunity in Guatemala, known by its Spanish acronym CICIG. The
independent body has 50 international prosecutors, police officers and
attorneys charged with investigating a limited number of sensitive
cases.
CICIG has successfully prosecuted several high-profile cases but its
longer-term mission is strengthening the attorney general's office and
other state institutions before the commission leaves Guatemala,
expected after 2015. It's overseen the hiring of hundreds of
prosecutors, many assigned to new investigative units, and helped train
them to use forensic evidence in trials.
According to a public ministry report, the ballistic evidence shows
soldiers opened fire at the protesters, contradicting initial claims by
the president and other government ministers that the soldiers were
unarmed and later claims that they were armed but fired only into the
air.
The president told reporters last week that armed security guards had
driven the soldiers to the protest and one of the guards apparently was
the first to start shooting. Then an unspecified number of soldiers
fired to protect themselves from what they considered a threatening
crowd, Perez said. Paz said all soldiers who fired their weapons were
arrested.
Ricardo Guzman, deputy undersecretary general for the attorney
general's office, said Guatemala's defense ministry cooperated fully
with the investigation, providing the roster of every soldier present at
the scene. Guzman said all of the soldiers' weapons were surrendered to
his office for investigation and investigators had matched the bullet
fragments from each body to specific soldiers' weapons.
"What happened at Totonicapan was a terrible tragedy. But with this
investigation we watched an independent public ministry at work," said
Michael Frulhling, Swedish ambassador to Guatemala. Since CICIG's
creation, Sweden has donated over $13 million to the commission.
Alberto Brunori, a representative of the U.N. Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights in Guatemala, said the public ministry's
findings match those of his office. He said such results would have been
unthinkable only a few years ago.
"Paz y Paz's investigation proves two things: CICIG's ability to
provide technical training and the level of professionalism the public
ministry is acquiring," Brunori said.
Romina Ruiz-Goiriena on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/romireportsAP
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