U.S. Can Conceal Records on Guatemalan Violence

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Courthouse News

Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Last Update: 11:08 AM PT
U.S. Can Conceal Records on Guatemalan Violence

(CN) - The U.S. government has no duty to release records on the violence that a group of individuals or their loved ones suffered in Guatemala in the 1970s and 1980s, the D.C. Circuit ruled. The court backed the government's claim that the documents are exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

The petitioners individually sought records on past incidents of violence, including a fatal plane crash in 1976, the abduction and disappearance of family members in 1981, and the 1983 murder of one petitioner's father in Guatemala.

The National Security Agency and the CIA withheld part or all of the requested records under two FOIA exemptions.

The first exemption protects national security or foreign policy secrets, while the other covers records "specifically exempted from disclosure by statute."

Government agencies can also refuse to confirm or deny the existence of certain records, known as the Glomar response - a tactic the government used with some of the petitioners.



Read more: http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/05/12/U_S_Can_Conceal_Records_on_Guatemalan_Violence_.htm

[dipsydoodle]

1. Guilty

No further comment.x(

[bertman]

2. They're scared to death of the "floodgates" effect.

Recommend.

[Downwinder]

3. National security, from Guatemala==You've got to be kidding me!! n/t

[bemildred]

5. Yeah, Guatemala is a big threat to the USA, invasion and conquest is only a matter of time. nt

[razors edge]

4. Move along, Move along,

Nothing to see here!!

[Metta]

6. Change we can believe in. Meet the new boss.

You know how it goes. Happy karma, Obama.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Refresher on Guatemala's recent history, comparison to Colombia now:

Genocidal war in Colombia parallels Guatemalan atrocities
By Roberto Rodriguez and Patrisia Gonzales, Fresno Bee, Monday 8 March 1999

Now from a point south comes another plea: Cecilia Zarate of Colombia has said, "What happened in Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s, is happening in my country today."

The recent release of Guatemala's truth commission report confirmed what much of the world already knew: Its military was involved in a genocidal 36-year war, mostly against the indigenous Mayan population.

The findings flatly contradict the Cold War assessments by the U.S. State Department, which essentially denied there were serious human rights problems in the region, permitting our government to support military regimes friendly to our "interests." Other primary targets in the war in Guatemala were campesinos, labor, community and human rights organizers, teachers, students, intellectuals and religious workers. The war claimed upward of 200,000 people, most of them killed in massacres, death-squad assassinations, kidnappings, rapes and extrajudicial executions.

Screams ignored
When this was happening, as a society we didn't listen to the pleas of Rigoberta Menchu, nor to the horrific screams of tortured campesinos, raped nuns, murdered priests or assassinated bishops. We didn't hear the sounds of millions of feet, as displaced Indians and campesinos of the region fled the scorched-earth policies of the military. Many wound up in the United States. While here, most lived in fear, staying one step ahead of immigration and State Department officials who accused them of lying about the condition of their homelands.

The commission recommended reparations for those traumatized by the war, for the loss of homes and the systematic land theft. What is left to ponder is, What role should the United States play in all this, for having financed this war?

Now from a point south comes another plea: Cecilia Zarate of Colombia has said, "What happened in Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s, is happening in my country today."

She unequivocally characterizes the war in Colombia as genocidal. "Anyone who supports the poor is eliminated."

The difference between Guatemala and Colombia, noted Zarate, who heads the Colombia Support Network in Madison, Wis., is that in Guatemala, the genocide was in large part racially motivated. In Colombia, the genocide against the poor is indiscriminate and includes indigenous people, Afro-Colombians, campesinos and anyone who expresses political dissent. In Colombia, the military and paramilitary troops are primarily responsible for perhaps 85% of the human rights violations, but even the opposition guerrillas are implicated, particularly in kidnappings.

More:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/163.html

[Judi Lynn]

8. Guatemalan activists receive death threats by text message

Guatemalan activists receive death threats by text message
7 May 2009

Nine activists working for two prominent human rights organizations in Guatemala have received dozens of death threats by SMS text messages. Amnesty International has warned that their lives are at risk.

Between 30 April and 5 May, nine members of the Association for the Study and Promotion of Security under Democracy and the Human Rights Defenders Protection Unit received over 40 SMS text messages containing abuse and death threats. The texts focused on their work to bring to justice those responsible for the crimes committed during Guatemala’s internal armed conflict.

One of the messages, sent on 2 May read: “You’ve got one hour, this is the last warning. Stop messing with us, military declassified files. We’ll kill your kids first, then you.”

On the morning of 4 May, two unknown men sat in a dark green car with tinted windows parked outside the house of one of the activists. Police officers were called and they later told the activist that the men were armed, had a valid licence to carry the weapons and were let go because they were considered not to be posing a threat.

At the same time, two of the activists received the same SMS text message, which read: “I am watching you <...> It’s good that you didn’t go to work, I have my sight set at you. Son of a bitch <…> you’re scared.”

More:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/guatemalan-activists-receive-death-threats-text-message-20090507

[Judi Lynn]

9. History of Guatemala's 'Death Squads' (US connections)

History of Guatemala's 'Death Squads'
By Robert Parry
January 11, 2005


Though many Latin American governments have practiced the dark arts of “disappearances” and “death squads,” the history of Guatemala’s security operations is perhaps the best documented because the Clinton administration declassified scores of the secret U.S. documents in the late 1990s.

The original Guatemalan death squads took shape in the mid-1960s under anti-terrorist training provided by a U.S. public safety adviser named John Longon, according to the documents. In January 1966, Longon reported to his superiors about both overt and covert components of his anti-terrorist strategies.

On the covert side, Longon pressed for “a safe house be immediately set up” for coordination of security intelligence. “A room was immediately prepared in the Palace for this purpose and … Guatemalans were immediately designated to put this operation into effect,” according to Longon’s report.

Longon’s operation within the presidential compound became the starting point for the infamous “Archivos” intelligence unit that evolved into a clearinghouse for Guatemala’s most notorious political assassinations.

Just two months after Longon's report, a secret CIA cable noted the clandestine execution of several Guatemalan "communists and terrorists" on the night of March 6, 1966. By the end of the year, the Guatemalan government was bold enough to request U.S. help in establishing special kidnapping squads, according to a cable from the U.S. Southern Command that was forwarded to Washington on Dec. 3, 1966.

By 1967, the Guatemalan counterinsurgency terror had gained a fierce momentum. On Oct. 23, 1967, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research noted the "accumulating evidence that the counterinsurgency machine is out of control." The report noted that Guatemalan "counter-terror" units were carrying out abductions, bombings, torture and summary executions "of real and alleged communists."

~snip~
The Reagan Bloodbath

As brutal as the Guatemalan security forces were in the 1960s and 1970s, the worst was yet to come. In the 1980s, the Guatemalan army escalated its slaughter of political dissidents and their suspected supporters to unprecedented levels.

Ronald Reagan's election in November 1980 set off celebrations in the well-to-do communities of Central America. After four years of Jimmy Carter's human rights nagging, the region's hard-liners were thrilled that they had someone in the White House who understood their problems.

The oligarchs and the generals had good reason for optimism. For years, Reagan had been a staunch defender of right-wing
In the late 1970s, when Carter's human rights coordinator, Patricia Derian, criticized the Argentine military for its "dirty war" -- tens of thousands of "disappearances," tortures and murders -- then-political commentator Reagan joshed that she should “walk a mile in the moccasins” of the Argentine generals before criticizing them.

After his election in 1980, Reagan pushed to overturn an arms embargo imposed on Guatemala by Carter. Yet as Reagan was moving to loosen up the military aid ban, the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies were confirming new Guatemalan government massacres.

In April 1981, a secret CIA cable described a massacre at Cocob, near Nebaj in the Ixil Indian territory. On April 17, 1981, government troops attacked the area believed to support leftist guerrillas, the cable said. According to a CIA source, "the social population appeared to fully support the guerrillas" and "the soldiers were forced to fire at anything that moved." The CIA cable added that "the Guatemalan authorities admitted that 'many civilians' were killed in Cocob, many of whom undoubtedly were non-combatants."

More:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/011005.html