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Judi Lynn

(160,515 posts)
Sun Mar 17, 2019, 01:59 AM Mar 2019

The Horrific Long-Term Consequences of Regime Change

The Horrific Long-Term Consequences of Regime Change
by Jacob G. Hornberger
March 15, 2019


84-year-old Emma Thiessen Alvarez has never forgotten the day in 1981 when Guatemalan officials came to her house looking for her daughter, a student leader who had escaped from military custody. Unable to find her, the officials settled for Thiessen’s 14-year-old son. She never saw him again.

Thiesen’s story was highlighted in a recent New York Times article because the Guatemalan legislature is now contemplating granting a blanket amnesty to military officials who participated in the rein of terror that the Guatemalan national-security establishment inflicted on the Guatemalan people for period of some 36 years.

Thiessen and other Guatemalans who were victimized during that period of time are not happy about the proposed amnesty. As Edgar Perez, a human-rights lawyer, put it, “For the victims, the sentence is their certificate of truth. It is their history.”

Guatemalans are not the only ones who have an interest in what is now occurring in that country. So do the American people. That’s because it was the U.S. national-security establishment that set into motion the events that ultimately led to the death of Emma Thiessen Alvarez’s son, along with 200,000 other Guatemalans, as well as to massive human-rights violations at the hands of the Guatemalan national-security establishment.

More:
https://www.fff.org/2019/03/15/the-horrific-long-term-consequences-of-regime-change/

Also posted in Editorials and other articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016228636

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