Guatemala ex-dictator must appear in genocide case

[Judi Lynn]

January 21, 2012 7:11 PM
Guatemala ex-dictator must appear in genocide case

AP) GUATEMALA CITY — Former dictator Efrain Rios Montt must appear in criminal court in a genocide case involving crimes against indigenous Guatemalans during his de-facto government in the 1980s, a federal prosecutor said Saturday.

The retired general must declare on Thursday before Judge Carol Flores, who will decide whether to go forward with genocide charges, prosecutor Manuel Vasquez said.

"We have sufficient evidence for charges of genocide and crimes against humanity," Vasquez said.

Rios Montt ruled Guatemala from 1982 to 1983 after a military coup and has been accused of mounting some of the worse massacres of the 1963-1996 civil war. He had legislative immunity until his recent term as a congressman expired on Jan. 14.

More:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501715_162-57363396/guatemala-ex-dictator-must-appear-in-genocide-case/


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[Judi Lynn]

1. Ronald Reagan was a hearty supporter of this monster, as well as Pat Robertson & other fundies.

GENERAL EFRAIN RIOS MONTT
President of Guatemala

"A Christian has to walk around with his Bible and his machine gun", said born-again General Efrain Rios Montt, military ruler of Guatemala from March 1982 to August 1983. Rios Montt was one in a long series of dictators who ran Guatemala after the Dulles brothers and United Fruit, backed by the CIA, decided that democratically-elected President Jacobo Arbenz was too reform-minded. And so, they overthrew the country's constitutional democracy in 1954. The succession of corrupt military dictators ruled Guatemala for over 30 years, one anti-communist tyrant after another receiving U.S. support, aid, and training. After the 1982 coup that brought Rios Montt to power, the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala said "Guatemala has come out of the darkness and into the light". President Reagan claimed Rios Montt was given "a bum rap" by human rights groups, and that he was cleaning up problems inherited from his predecessor, General Romeo Lucas Garcia. Ironically, Garcia had given $500,000 to Reagan's 1980 campaign, and his henchman, Mario Sandoval Alarcon, the 'Godfather' of Central American death squads, was a guest at Reagan's first inaugural celebration. Sandoval proudly calls his National Liberation Movement " the party of organized violence". Montt simply moved Garcia's dirty war from urban centers to the countryside where "the spirit of the lord" guided him against "communist subversives', mostly indigenous Indians. As many as 10,000 Indians were killed and over 100,000 fled to Mexico as a result of Rios Montt's "Christian" campaign.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

~snip~
After the 1954 coup that overthrew the popular reformist government of Jacobo Arbenz, over 200 000 civilians lost their lives in the subsequent “anti-communist” crusade, which was fully endorsed by the US. Various international monitoring agencies have applied the term “genocide” to describe the rampage of organised killing.

Despite these disclosures, Washington continued to back the regime throughout the period in question. Former US president Ronald Reagan was particularly taken with the dictator and School of the Americas graduate Efrain Rios Montt. On becoming president in 1980, Reagan ramped up diplomatic and military ties with Guatemala, blocking UN scrutiny and providing arms, equipment and training.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501715_162-57363396/guatemala-ex-dictator-must-appear-in-genocide-case/

Wikipedia

~snip~
'Frijoles y Fusiles'On June 9, the other two members of the junta were forced to resign, leaving Ríos Montt as the sole leader, head of the armed forces, and minister of defense. Violence escalated in the countryside, with the massacres becoming much more generalized in a campaign known as frijoles y fusiles (beans and guns). This was an attempt by Ríos Montt to win over the large indigenous population to his version of the rule of the law, unleashing a scorched earth campaign on the nation's Mayan population, particularly in the departments of Quiché and Huehuetenango, that, according to the 1999 United Nations truth commission, resulted in the annihilation of nearly 600 villages. One example was the Plan de Sánchez massacre in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, in July 1982, which saw over 250 people killed. The administration established special military courts that had the power to impose death penalties against criminals and suspected guerrillas. Tens of thousands of peasant farmers fled over the border into southern Mexico. Meanwhile, urban areas saw a period of relative calm. The June 1982 amnesty for political prisoners was replaced by a state of siege that limited the activities of political parties and labor unions under the threat of death by firing squad.

In 1982, an Amnesty International report estimated that over 10,000 indigenous Guatemalans and peasant farmers were killed from March to July of that year, and that 100,000 rural villagers were forced to flee their homes. According to more recent estimates, tens of thousands of non-combatants were killed by the regime's death squads in the subsequent eighteen months. At the height of the bloodshed under Ríos Montt, reports put the number of killings and disappearances at more than 3,000 per month.[10] Based on the number of people killed per capita, Ríos Montt was probably the most violent dictator in Latin America's recent history, more so than even other notorious dictators such as Chile's Augusto Pinochet, Argentina's Jorge Rafael Videla, and Bolivia's Hugo Banzer.

U.S. backingGiven Ríos Montt's staunch anticommunism and ties to the United States, the Reagan administration continued to support the general and his regime, paying a visit to Guatemala City in December 1982.[11] During a meeting with Ríos Montt on December 4, Reagan declared: "President Ríos Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. ... I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice."1

Reagan claimed Guatemala's human rights conditions were improving and overturned the arms embargo imposed on Guatemala by president Carter in 1977, by agreeing, in January 1983, to sell millions of dollars worth of military hardware, including weapons and vehicles, to the country's government. The decision was taken in spite of records concerning human rights violations, by-passing the approval from Congress.[12][13][14][15][16] Meanwhile, a then-secret 1983 CIA cable noted a rise in "suspect right-wing violence" and an increasing number of bodies "appearing in ditches and gullies."[17] In turn, Guatemala was eager to resurrect the Central American Defense Council, defunct since 1969, to join forces with the right-wing governments of El Salvador and Honduras in retaliations against the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501715_162-57363396/guatemala-ex-dictator-must-appear-in-genocide-case/

~snip~
There are plenty of references on the Web to Falwell's friendship with this guy, this guy who wiped out so many people in such a short period of time. Rios Montt was probably better known to the researchers of religious right affairs as Pat Robertson's buddy. From RightWatch's page on the Christian Broadcasting Network:

Within a week of the 1982 coup which brought evangelical Gen. Efrain Rios Montt to power, Pat Robertson flew to Guatemala to meet with the new president. (28) Rios Montt's first interview as president was with Robertson, who aired it on "The 700 Club" and praised the new military government. (14) Robertson also urged donations for International Love Lift, a relief project of Rios Montt's U.S. church, Gospel Outreach. (28) Rios Montt said that Pat Robertson had offered to send missionaries and "more than a billion dollars" in aid from U.S. fundamentalists. Robertson, however, claimed that he hoped to match the earlier CBN donation of $350,000 in earthquake relief and send "a small team of medical and agricultural experts" to Guatemala. (14) CBN reportedly sponsored a campaign to send money and agricultural and medical technicians to help design the first model villages under Rios Montt. (4)

More:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/05/15/334999/-Jerry-Falwell,-friend-of-Efrain-Rios-Montt

[carla]

2. EAT

THE RICH!!!!!

[sulphurdunn]

3. Rios Montt

deserves to fry for what he did in the Guatemalan Highlands in the name of God and Country.