Guatemala genocide trial: legal challenges, debates, attacks on "hairy hippies, communists...

[Catherina]

Guatemala genocide trial: legal challenges, debates, and attacks on "hairy hippies, foreigners, communists"
Xeni Jardin at 10:36 am Tue, Apr 23, 2013



Photo: Jaime Reyes, Guatemala. A bus carrying demonstrators from the Ixil area to a pro-Rios Montt march in Guatemala City. The sign reads, “Hairy Hippies and Foreigners, stop making money off the lie of genocide in Nebaj.”

I've been traveling in Guatemala for the past few weeks, reporting on the genocide trial of former Guatemalan General and dictator Rios Montt, and his then-head of intelligence Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez. Montt's 1982-1983 regime was supported by the United States; during this era many thousands of non-combatant civilians were killed.

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As I publish this post, a large assembly of former civil patrollers ("patrulleros," mostly indigenous people who were conscripted by the Army to fight in the counterinsurgency), Army veterans and their families and allies, and Ixil persons transported in from Nebaj, have descended upon Guatemala City in a caravan of buses with provocative banners.


Ricardo Mendez-Ruiz of Guatemalan Foundation Against Terrorism (Fundación Contra El Terrorismo), with Ixil people transported to Guatemala City from Nebaj for a demonstration supporting Rios Montt, and condemning the genocide trial. Photo: skylight.is.

One sign on one of the pro-Montt buses carrying in protesters from the Ixil area reads, “Hairy Hippies and Foreigners, stop making money off the lie of genocide in Nebaj” (the Ixil area at the center of this tribunal is generally defined as a zone around three villages: Nebaj, Chajul, and Cotzal). Another banner reads, “Don’t shame the Ixiles with this genocide stuff, because it’s a lie.”

The march appears to have been organized by Fundacion Contra El Terrorismo. Inviting Facebook fans to join the march, the group warns: “Remember, a genocide conviction won’t just be against Montt and Sanchez, it will be against you and me, and the entire state of Guatemala. And it will affect you financially—you have to pay victims compensation, which will mostly line pockets of middlemen.”

Get off of Facebook and on to the streets, the group asked its followers. “And don’t complain if your laziness allows communists to decide the future for you."



Fundación Contra El Terrorismo is the same group that recently published a 20-page insert in the Sunday paper which blamed a Marxist conspiracy enabled by the Catholic Church for the "lie" of genocide on trial in the Guatemalan courts. You can read it here.

Ricardo Mendez-Ruiz, the Foundation's director and the son of Rios Montt’s former Minister of Interior, wrote an op-ed in today's El Periodico titled "Mickey Mouse Pressure."

In his op-ed, Mendez personally condemns Nobel Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz, and US Ambassador to Guatemala Arnold Chacon, linking them indirectly the to “Marxist-Leninist ideology” that was purportedly at the heart of the internal armed conflict, and threatens still to destroy the country. More directly, the implication is that the US Ambassador, and the country he represents, are manipulating or applying pressure to the justice system to enable the genocide trial. In other words, "Mickey Mouse Pressure."

The US Embassy and a coalition of international aid groups which were recently condemned in media attacks took the unprecedented step of publishing this statement on Friday. The statement emphasizes their respect for Guatemala's sovereignty, and is a move of support toward a fair and functional justice system. These accusations [against us] don't help to confront the real problems Guatemala faces, their message concludes.



The Fundación Contra El Terrorismo's Mendez has been speaking out frequently in domestic media of late. The group's argument is that foreigners and domestic communists funded by foreigners are inciting a revengeful attack on the Guatemalan Army and the state itself through the genocide trial; there was no genocide, they say, and to ask the question is to attack Guatemala and the soldiers who sacrificed their lives fighting the threat of the Soviet- and Cuba-backed international communist conspiracy.


Ricardo Mendez-Ruiz of Guatemalan Foundation Against Terrorism (Fundación Contra El Terrorismo), leading a public protest in Guatemala City for the Montt genocide trial to be terminated. Photo: skylight.is.
[link:https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=470228069716795&id=410347102371559|
In the Ixil area today], Mayan community organization Comité de Unidad Campesina condemns the pro-Montt demonstration as, more or less, the result of unfair manipulation and bribery of war victims who are living in poverty. Indigenous leader Miguel Rivera of Nebaj will speak shortly.

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Photo: Fernanda Toledo, Guatemala. A bus carrying demonstrators from the Ixil area to a pro-Rios Montt march in Guatemala City. The sign reads, “Don't shame the Ixiles with this genocide stuff, because it's a lie.”



According to pro-tribunal activists, some Ixiles who were bussed in from Nebaj today came because they were promised a free gift of fertilizer for their crops; when they arrived, they were told they were obligated to participate in the pro-Montt, anti-tribunal demonstration to receive the gift. Above, one Ixil person carries a sign saying, "I'd rather not receive fertilizer to deny genocide." (Pic: HijosGuatemala via NISGUA)

Archive: Boing Boing coverage of the Rios Montt genocide trial in Guatemala.


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http://boingboing.net/2013/04/23/guatemala-genocide-trial-lega.html

[truedelphi]

1. I'll be gone in an hour - but

Am anxious to see what this story will tell us.

I had friends connected with Stephen Gaskin's Farm community who did work in Guatemala, back in the early Seventies. They finally left the country because almost every time they helped someone, that person would end up impaled by a two by four.

[Catherina]

2. What's happening in Guatemala is beyond outrageous

The *civilized* social classes here see the Mayans as subhumans and fit only to serve them. You can steal their land, burn their homes, murder them, murder their children and almost no one will bat an eyelash. The land thieves own most of the courts and write the laws, they run around all day chasing people off their land waving a paper the Mayans can't even read sometimes, yelling "it's the law, the law".

I'm sorry your friends witnessed that but I'm grateful they did because most people pretend not to see.

[truedelphi]

10. In twenty years time, this nation will resemble that one

We watch as the Big Banks and Financial Institutions dispossess some eight million to twelve million homeowners. Once an economy reaches the point where 49 cents out of every dollar of profit made goes directly into the coffers of the Biggest Banks, democracy is finished. The next ten years will just be the One Percent further outlawing every thing else that might impact them.With the legislators saying, "If we stop them it will cause further financial ruin - those firms are "Too Big To be Regulated" and "Too Big To Fail" and ultimately "Too Big To Jail."

Some economic critics and experts were holding out hope, as of late last summer, that when the LIBOR matter reached the courts, the situation would be exposed and overturned. Instead, the judgment against the Financial Institutions was that no one can say for sure that they colluded!

And Eric Holder didn't go after the executives at HSBC, saying it would badly impact the American economy! How so? You could jail the people at the top,. and take over the Institution as a whole. Banks get taken over by the Federal Government every day of the week when considered financially unsound. But a bank and its executives that launder the dirty and violent drug cartel monies gets to

A) Keep the profit
B) Remain basically untouched (Okay, they paid a penalty, but it was a very small penalty in relationship to the amount of profit HSBC made

Meanwhile in California, a community activist whose "crime" was keeping a med marijuana dispensary open will be serving ten years. Despite the fact that everything he did complied with state of California law, approved by us voters. Too bad his actions were not approved by HSBC or some drug cartel!

[Justina For Justice]

3. Excellent Eye-Witness Reporting, Catherina!

Thanks so much for your excellent reporting on events in Latin America, and especially this eye-witness report from Guatemala.

One wonders if some Republican publicist has been hired by the Montt cabal in hopes of confusing the genocide issues. This anti-Montt Genocide trial campaign sounds like something cooked up by Dick Morris. Let's hope it is not as effective as the crap we have been fed in the U.S. media to justify our invasion of Iraq and -- in process -- our prospective attacks on Syria and Iran.

[Catherina]

5. Thanks but that's not my reporting

A friend of mine wrote that excellent report. I'll pass your compliments on

The President of Guatemala wants this trial killed because he's involved. He wants more weapons and military aid from the US to fight the Leftist guerillas but he can't get any unless he puts a little lipstick on the genocide so the US Congress can say that Guatemala is moving ahead on *human rights*. So he made a deal the trial could go forward as long as he wasn't implicated. He got implicated big time and his immunity is only good, under Guatemalan law, as long as he's in office. Yes, this sounds like a Dick Morris cook up. I'm expecting to hear "It depends what the meaning of is is" anytime now.

[MisterP]

4. reminds me of when the 70s Argentine junta called HR accusations just another aspect of imperialism

[Catherina]

6. They're so diabolical. n/t

[MisterP]

7. come to think of it, why isn't Sean Penn chanting alongside

these National Liberation Movement freaks? where is he on Belize, Western Sahara, East Timor? why shouldn't Germany get all of Europe back?!

[ocpagu]

8. That's just horrible.

What kind of person is willing to defend a monster such as Rios Montt? And denying the genocide? So disgusting.

Thanks for sharing this report, Catherina.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Tactics so low they defy belief. Human beings don't act like this.

Only the greedy, racist right would ever consider this kind of dirty, disrespectful behavior toward good, decent, pure in hearted people.

Their criminality toward the innocent WILL be accounted for at some point in their lives.
Wouldn't want to be in their shoes when it happens.

What they have done to a world they DON'T own is beyond forgiveness.

Thank you for sharing the background in this horrible charade, It sounds EXACTLY like the crap the right-wing has done before in other places. It's their "style."

[Catherina]

11. Here's the rightwing's 20 page newspaper insert "The Genocide Farce"

Last edited Sun May 5, 2013, 11:00 PM - Edit history (1)

This is the Anti-Terror Foundation’s new paid campaign in the Sunday paper, condemning the Left, the European Keft, Rigoberta Menchú, UN observers, etc....

http://www.scribd.com/doc/139529647/La-Farsa-Del-Genocidio-Parte-III



Here's a website by some other shady group: http://chapinesunidosporguate.com/ Guatemalans United for Guatemala

First question on the website: “Do you know what will happen if Guatemala is condemned with Genocide?”

[Judi Lynn]

12. There's a farce going in, all right. Can't believe they're doing this.

It sounds exactly like the U.S. American South when they blamed any trouble people were having, and no one was hurt other than minority people, and those who believed in justice, and they claimed all the trouble was caused by "Northerners", and "Jews" and "communists," and "outsiders."

They told filthy stories to each other about the cops finding condoms in the streets after "freedom marchers" had passed by, claiming they had been rutting in the road like wild beasts, etc., etc.

What has happened in Guatemala, however is far, far worse than 1950's. 1960's U.S. Sounds like hell.

Thanks for the links. It's still hard to believe anyone can be this low. It truly takes a right-wing source to consider this criminality against the human race.