Guatemalan protests as leader faces murder claims

[AlphaCentauri]

...
In Guatemala, Attorney General Amilcar Velasquez Zarate told AFP that he was handing the Rosenberg case over to the UN-supported International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) to guarantee its independence.

"We have no interest in hiding anything, or anyone," Velasquez said. "We want to get to the bottom of this investigation"

The CICIG chief, Spaniard Carlos Castresana, said he personally asked Colom to not intervene in the investigation.

Four Nobel Peace winners meeting in Guatemala for a separate event expressed their concern over the case.

"We are in an unprecedented crisis that makes clear the vulnerabilities of the institutional system," said Guatemalan indigenous leader Rigoberta Menchu, the 1992 Nobel winner.

She was joined by Iranian 2003 winner Shirin Ebadi, 1997 US winner Jody Williams, and 1976 British winner Mairead Corrigan-Maguire in expressing concern and support for the country's young democracy.

Some 98 percent of criminal cases in Guatemala go unsolved, according to CICIG figures.

US ambassador Stephen McFarland also announced that an FBI agent had arrived to help the CICIG investigation, following Colom's request for foreign help.

Like many Central American countries, Guatemala is used as both a bridge and a storage spot by illegal drug cartels moving cocaine from South America to markets in the United States and Europe.

Guatemala is also still recovering from the effects of the 1960-1996 civil war, in which leftist insurgents battled the country's armed forces, which often responded with scorched earth tactics. Some 200,000 people were killed during that period, according to human rights groups.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jaTRHhpKee6C1vV0SgHK_YH4WsZg

[rabs]

1. Decent reporting by French news agency AFP

There are some updates and facts not included. I am inclined to think that a slow-motion coup is under way.

-- Colom is the first leftist president of Guatemala in 55 years. Since the CIA-sponsored overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954.

-- Today Colom said he will "never" resign and "only dead" will he be taken out of the presidential palace. (Shades of Salvador Allende in Santiago, Sept. 11,
1973.)
20:57 | 13/05/2009
El presidente de Guatemala, Álvaro Colom, aseguró hoy que no renunciará “jamas” y que “sólo muerto” lo sacaran de Palacio de Gobierno.

-- Colom said the accusations against him "are part of a plan" to destabilize the government.
Estas acusaciones, subrayo Colom, “son parte de un plan” encaminado a desestabilizar al Gobierno.

-- An unanswered question thus far is who benefited by the killing of the lawyer Rosenberg? Certainly not Colom.

-- Rosenberg was killed on Sunday, by Monday there was a highly-organized Facebook group of more than 5,000 organizing protests and calling for Colom's resignation.

-- At the funeral on Monday, a sinister character said he distributed 150 CDs of Rosenberg's video and that he had not had enough copies. Pretty fast work to make 150 copies from Sunday when Rosenberg was killed to his funeral on Monday.

-- That character is Luis Mendizabal, who was the Guatemalan liaison to El Salvador's extreme-rightwing ARENA party according to an article published by the newspaper La Prensa Grafica on Aug. 29, 2004.

-- Another article in the newspaper El Grafico (July 4, 2000) said Mendizabal was one of the founders of "La Oficinita," a group that defended military officers accused of massacres in Guatemala.

-- The government has said "organized crime" is behind assassination of Rosenberg, Khalil Musa and his daughter on April 14. Khalil Musa and Colom were close friends and both were textile executives. So Musa's killing makes no sense to the Colom government.

-- Guatemala -Narco-Business: A “New War” (Magazine Revista Envio, No. 332, March 2009)

President Álvaro Colom has been visibly surprised at the exponential growth of drug trafficking throughout the country. Narco-business is triggering a “new war” with thousands of victims. It is also leading Guatemala into a dangerous institutional atrophy and boosting impunity by nourishing a nest of vipers in the state.

A state infiltrated by criminal interests

There are unquestionable indications of incrusted powerful interests within the state that are working against its effectiveness in the struggle against big globalized national criminal capital.

-- Today there was an anti-Colom and a pro-Colom demonstration outside the presidential palace.
In the video, note the anti-Colom crowd and then note the pro-Colom supporters. The two groups were kept apart and there have been no clashes, so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzbE4kGzUXk&feature=channel_page