Public Statement

In Guatemala, the perpetrators of Genocide are still in Power. They must be brought to Justice!

Thirty six years of war have torn apart Guatemala. The indigenous Mayan peoples were the main victims of a campaign of mass murder prepared by the Guatemalan state and executed by the army, aided and abetted by the United States, who sought to defend their strategic and economic interests.

In 1996, after a long process of negotiations, the Guatemalan State and the guerrillas of the country finally signed a peace accord, putting an end to the civil war. However, five years later, the picture is a grim one: a peace drawn up on paper has not materialized. The objective of the peace accords was to bring about economic, political, social and cultural changes. At the same time, Guatemala has recently seen the emergence of an organized civil society movement that is demanding justice for the horrors of the past. The secret graves are being dug up in exhumations, telling the real story of the conflict to the world.

The Commission for Historical Clarification determined that the State was responsibility for 93% of the atrocities committed during the conflict. Eye-witnesses and Guatemalan and international human rights organizations have pointed a finger at the former military heads of state and their associates as responsible for such abuses. In June 2001, the survivors of the razed village of Petanac and 10 other indigenous communities, also victims of massacres, filed a collective legal suit against General Efrain Rios Montt and his high command for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. Rios Montt (currently President of the Guatemalan Congress), became President of Guatemala in 1982 in a coup d'état, and his regime was a bloody one, during which hundreds of massacres were perpetrated in rural areas.

By filing this suit, the witnesses have placed their lives in danger. Guatemalans are defending their right to historic memory and are trying to bring dignity and justice to those who have seen their family members massacred. They, too, are living under threat of retribution.

The country's courts seem incapable of finding and bringing to justice those responsible. The slowness, if not to say the paralysis of the judicial system, amounts to a war of usury/extortion against plaintiffs worn down by poverty, for whom the smallest court transaction/matter implies immeasurable sacrifice. The witnesses need long term international support.

Unfortunately, foreign governments, including that of Canada, don't consider the struggle against impunity in Guatemala as a priority. As our nations mobilize against terrorism, we are abandoning the victims of a state terrorism that was supported by the United States.

We the undersigned, including Mateo Pablo, survivor of the Petanac massacre (14 July 1982, department of Huehuetenango), recognize the important decision taken by the State of Canada in signing and ratifying the statute of the International Criminal Court and having reformed its domestic criminal law in order to adopt the principles of the Court, which permit the trial of war criminals and of crimes against humanity.

We demand a revision of the clause that imposes the condition that the criminals must live in Canada, in order to be tried.

Crimes such as genocide, ethnocide, rape, state terrorism, torture and others, have been committed and will continue to be committed until those responsible are tried and punished. We call on the Canadian government to continue its efforts to ensure that the International Criminal Court becomes functional, and to show its opposition to crimes against humanity and war crimes, that could be repeated in the future.

Statement drafted by: the Projet Accompagnement Québec-Guatémala, Mateo Pablo, survivor of the Petanac massacre, Henry Monroy, Guatemalan lawyer and jurist, Lesvia Vela, Abya Yala bookshop, Mary Ellen Davis, producer of The Haunted Land.

Signed by Rights & Democracy