An amnesty for crimes against humanity? Guatemalan proposal stirs outrage.

[Judi Lynn]

An amnesty for crimes against humanity? Guatemalan proposal stirs outrage.



Guatemalans protest the proposed immunity law in Guatemala City in January. (Esteban Biba/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

By Sandra Cuffe and
Mary Beth Sheridan February 24

GUATEMALA CITY — For years, it was dangerous to speak of the horrific abuses by security forces during this small country’s 36-year civil war. The army and its allies remained powerful well after the conflict that had claimed 200,000 lives. But then Guatemala stunned the world by starting to prosecute former military officers for genocide and other crimes.

Now the Guatemalan Congress is considering a bill that would grant amnesty to perpetrators of crimes against humanity. It would free more than 30 convicts, mostly former military officers, and invalidate current and future trials for crimes linked to the 1960-1996 war.

The bill, which is expected to be back on Congress’s agenda next week, has prompted outrage from Guatemalan civil society groups and organizations representing the indigenous, who make up 40 percent of the population but more than 80 percent of the victims of wartime abuses.

The measure has also alarmed the United Nations and the U.S. government. Robert Palladino, deputy spokesman at the U.S. State Department, said last week that Washington was “deeply concerned” about the measure.

The legislative push comes as other Latin American countries are finally reckoning with the counterinsurgency tactics used by military forces against civilians during the Cold War. In Argentina, hundreds of human rights abusers have been convicted in the past 15 years. In El Salvador, where an amnesty law was struck down in 2016, 18 military officers are on trial for the massacre of nearly 1,000 people in El Mozote in 1981 — one of the worst atrocities in Latin American history.

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/an-amnesty-for-crimes-against-humanity-guatemalan-proposal-stirs-outrage/2019/02/23/bc0fe13e-3481-11e9-8375-e3dcf6b68558_story.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Why does this seem so familiar? From the article:

But now, analysts say, there is a growing backlash against the trials of former wartime military officials and the aggressive investigations of corruption by political, military and business elites in this impoverished country. Many of those corruption cases are being co-prosecuted by a pioneering U.N.-backed commission, which President Jimmy Morales is trying to shut down.

The amnesty bill “is part of a larger assault on the rule of law that is aimed at restoring the power of a corrupt elite” in Guatemala, said Jo-Marie Burt, a political scientist and Latin America specialist who teaches at George Mason University.

Damned rotten, isn't it? We've seen it so many times. They are STILL going to lose, in the end. Everyone knows it, including the fascists themselves.