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Guatemalan Indians Bring Global Movement Home Charging Top Politician with Genocide
By Mary Jo McConnahay, Pacific News Service, June 8, 2001

Maya Indians -- the majority of the 200,000 persons who died in Guatemala's civil war -- are pushing the limits of international law by bringing war crimes charges against a former dictator at home, not in an international tribunal. Despite risks in a still-fragile democracy, massacre survivors launched the case against Efrain Rios Montt, a powerful politician who now presides over the country's top law-making body. PNS editor Mary Jo McConahay has reported from Central America for over 15 years.

Indian peasants have charged Guatemala's bible-quoting, iron-fisted political headman with genocide, breaking new ground in the global movement for prosecution of perpetrators of mass violence.

They accuse Congress President Efrain Rios Montt with command responsibility for massacres in eleven named villages during his dictatorship in the l980s. And they are doing it not in an international tribunal, but at home, in a court system where judges regularly report threats and lawyers are killed.

Front page pictures in Guatemalan newspapers June 7 displayed a "Wanted" poster for Rios charging war crimes. They published excerpts from charges filed by Maya survivors that Rios' high command, fighting leftist insurgents, made no distinction between combatants and civilians. The charges are stark: Rios "saw the indigenous communities as subversive and sympathizing with communism. That is why he ordered our annihilation."

This is a new turn in the process that began in l998 with the London arrest of Chilean General Augusto Pinochet ordered by a Spanish judge. By bringing the case into their own courts, the Maya are showing considerable courage, says Amy Ross, professor of International Justice at the University of Georgia. The survivors are taking the l948 Genocide Convention, which grew out of the desire to prevent atrocities like the slaughter of Jews in the Second World War but "has never really been used," and applying it on the ground, said Ross. This "pushes forward international law, using it to go to accountability for massive violence. For them it is not just a theory."

A UN-sponsored Truth Commission held the army responsible for 85 percent of all violations in the 30 year war, which ended in l996. Some 200,000 died, more than 80 percent of them unarmed Maya, including women and children. By declaring state authorities responsible for "acts of genocide" -- for which there is no immunity from prosecution -- the Commission opened the door for charges against even ranking office-holders.

Rios had no immediate response. In the past, military officials have denied genocide was an intent or policy and Rios himself, in interviews, has claimed no knowledge of atrocities during his l8 months as chief of state, after taking power in a coup in l982. Yet army publications number 440 villages "eliminated" in the name of counterinsurgency.

In the highlands, home to most Maya about 70 percent of Guatemala's 11 million population -- there is no doubt about the raging violence that sent up to a million fleeing.

In the mountain village of Santa Anita Las Canoas, one of those named in the case, Luis Curruchich spoke of the day in l982 when the army surrounded the town and began shooting as families fled. Cucurrich's wife Transita, 25, died, his infant girl disappeared, and neighbors saw soldiers take off two young daughters.

At Choatulum, another named village, a survivor still looks wide-eyed at the memory of being held "for days" in a waist-high pool of water at the army base as others undergoing torture finally slipped under and drowned. And the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology team, now exhuming mass graves at the rate of three or four per month, has little doubt about the violence.

Stefan Schmitt, a founding member of that team, spoke of Plan de Sanchez, also named in the suit, where at least 82 died in l982. Usually investigators estimate the number of victims by counting the number of long bones, such as a right femur (the bone from hip to knee). But at Plan de Sanchez, soldiers and civil patrollers under their command threw grenades into, then burned down the house where they had gathered townspeople, so remains were fragmented.

"We had to make three piles for the upper, middle and lower sections of the long bones," said Schmitt, who now works for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and teaches at Florida State, "and determine our count that way for most. On the outskirts, where girls had been raped then killed one by one, remains were more intact."

It is far from certain Rios and four named military officials who served under him will ever face charges in person in court, even more uncertain he will be convicted. On June 8, a Guatemala court did find two officers among those guilty for the murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi in l998, the first crack in a wall of impunity long surrounding officials. But the charge of genocide requires proving an intent to destroy a group, a complicated matter.

An even more weighty obstacle, say observers in Guatemala City, is Rios' standing as the head of the ruling party of President Alfonso Portillo, who is not a strong figure. Rios may simply ignore the case.

But just bringing the case is significant, according to Eric Stover, who directs the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley. "Look at Pinochet -- who knows if he will ever be in the docket, but the case is showing Chileans in denial about what happened that their own judges take this seriously."

Legal proceedings based on the principal of universal jurisdiction for rights crimes are proliferating outside the place where atrocities happened -- Chad's former dictator Hissene Habre was indicted last year in Senegal, El Salvadoran officers were charged with responsibility in the deaths of four U.S. churchwomen in a Florida court. Four Rwandans were found guilty in Belgium June 7, the first case where a civilian jury convicted offenders for war crimes in another country. By bringing the Rios Montt case in Guatemala, survivors are bringing the spotlight home.

"We believe justice has to be brought to the genocide in Guatemala," said Frank La Rue, director of the Center for Human Rights Legal Action, whose lawyers are representing the Maya Indians. "But we believe it must be done with domestic courts first because we want to see the internal justice system begin to operate and respond to the victims."


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