GUATEMALA

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World Report Entry 2000

World Report Entry 1999

World Report Entry 1998

GUATEMALA'S FORGOTTEN CHILDREN
Police Violence and Arbitrary Detention
Thousands of children living in Guatemala’s streets face routine beatings, thefts, and sexual assaults at the hands of private security guards (who are under the jurisdiction of the Interior Ministry) and the National Police. More serious crimes against street children, including assassination and torture, have lessened since their heyday in the early 1990s, but do still occur. In April 1996, sixteen-year-old Susana Gómez was raped by two National Police officers while a third kept watch. In September 1996, sixteen-year-old Ronald Raúl Ramos was shot and killed by a Treasury Police officer. More than ten other street children were murdered in 1996 under suspicious circumstances. As of April 1997, all of the perpetrators in these cases remained at large. While three convictions for murders of street children handed down in late 1996 and early 1997 represent significant and encouraging news, hundreds of other cases involving crimes against street children remain stalled; most are never even investigated. Crimes against street children are a low priority for police investigators, particularly when a fellow officer is implicated. In contrast, juvenile offenders, and even non-offenders, are dealt with harshly. "Juvenile justice" in Guatemala suffers from multiple and severe defects, rendering it less than justice and little more than warehousing. Street children are arrested and locked-up arbitrarily, sometimes merely for being homeless, other times for such vague "offenses" as "creating a public scandal," or "loitering." Children in detention receive no meaningful rehabilitation, education, psychological treatment or vocational training. They are crowded together in unsanitary conditions and are mistreated by unqualified staff—all in violation of international standards.
(2130) 8/97, 144 pp., ISBN 1-56432-213-0, $10.00/£8.95
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Freedom of Association in a Maquila in Guatemala
A two-person Human Rights Watch delegation traveled to Guatemala in January 1997. The visit focused on reports of the discriminatory treatment of trade unionists at the assembly plants there of the U.S.-based corporation Phillips-Van Heusen (PVH), and allegations of obstacles posed by the company and the Guatemalan labor ministry to the union’s recognition for purposes of collective bargaining. Principally at issue in the latter was the union’s claim to have secured the membership of more than one-fourth of the total workforce: Guatemalan law requires employers to negotiate with unions in such circumstances, but the company challenged the union’s membership claims. Human Rights Watch determined to undertake the inquiry into the underlying issue of freedom of association in the two PVH plants in Guatemala plants in response to requests by the union there, their international supporters (notably the U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project), and the company itself.
(B903) 3/97, 62 pp., $7.00/£5.95
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RETURN TO VIOLENCE
Refugees, Civil Patrollers, and Impunity
Tens of thousands of Guatemalans fled systematic army repression between 1980 and 1983, flooding southern Mexico with refugees. Hundreds of thousands more were estimated to be displaced internally. Recent cases of state violence against returning refugees cast serious doubts on the Guatemalan government's commitment to ensure safe repatriation and foster the rule of law in rural areas. In one incident, uniformed troops of the Guatemalan army were involved in a massacre of returnees in the northern department of Alta Verapaz. In other incidents in a neighboring department, the civil patrol apparatus created and controlled by the army was responsible for numerous human rights violations.
(B801) 1/96, 31 pp., $5.00/£2.95
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DISAPPEARED IN GUATEMALA
The Case of Efraín Bámaca Velásquez
Tens of thousands of Guatemalans, both civilians and combatants, were disappeared by government forces over the past 3 decades. One of the fundamental tasks assumed by the government and guerrillas through the ongoing U.N.-mediated peace process is to end the impunity with which such crimes have been committed. In a series of agreements signed over the course of 1994, the parties agreed that the truth about human rights violations should be exposed and those responsible should be brought to justice. The disappearance of Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, a combatant with the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca who was captured by the army in March 1992, puts these solemn commitments to the test, a test which thus far, the government has failed.
(B701) 3/95, 15 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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Human Rights in Guatemala During President De León Carpió’s First Year
The people of Guatemala have suffered savage repression at the hands of security forces, civil patrols, and guerrillas waging a thirty-year civil war. Their villages were razed and tens of thousands disappeared — presumably murdered — their bodies occasionally discovered in clandestine graves throughout the highlands. This legacy of human rights abuses has terrorized many Guatemalans to such an extent that the few democratic institutions that developed since military rule ended in 1986 are woefully stunted. Astonishing political changes occurred in 1993, when elected President Jorge Serrano Elías briefly seized dictatorial powers (a la Fujimori of Peru), then was ousted by the army as national and international opinion turned against him. Into the presidency stepped a well-respected governmental human rights advocate, Ramiro de León Carpió. Unfortunately, his proposed reforms were soon overshadowed by a lack of political support, high-profile assassinations, and a recalcitrant military. One year later, with little else to show for its initial promise, the Guatemalan government has signed an accord with the guerrillas paving the way for a United Nations human rights monitoring team, which could restrain the security forces and civil patrols long used to operating without international scrutiny. Absent is an amnesty for human rights abuses, which many feared the military would demand as part of such an accord. However, without establishing a Truth Commission, reconciliation cannot begin, for the government of Guatemala owes the relatives of the disappeared answers as to the fate of their loved ones.
(1371) 6/94, 160 pp., ISBN 1-56432-137-1, $15.00/£12.95
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Clandestine Detention in Guatemala
The testimonies presented in this document — of abductions, clandestine detentions and physical or psychological mistreatment and torture — comprise just a few examples of a larger problem. These detentions appear to have been carried out as part of a military effort to gather information on activities of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity guerrillas, although the government has denied responsibility for the practice.
(B502) 3/93, 18 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER
The Medicolegal System and Human Rights in Guatemala
Since the overthrow of a reformist democratic government in 1954, Guatemala has been known for astounding military violence inflicted on a defenseless civilian population. A new civilian government elected in 1986 first raised and then dashed hopes for an end to the torture, murder and disappearances carried out with impunity by the security forces. This report analyzes the medicolegal system and its handling of several recent political killings, including the December 1990 army massacre of villagers in Santiago Atitl n, to show why the perpetrators of political murders are rarely punished in Guatemala. In addition, the report chronicles a series of exhumations of clandestine graves conducted by the forensic team assembled by Americas Watch and Physicians for Human Rights at the start of 1991 in a remote mountain village in the embattled Quiché province. (With photographs.)
(0073) 1991, 64 pp., ISBN 1-56432-007-3, $7.00/£5.95
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