/* Written 9:11 PM Aug 14, 1991 by cerisea in igc:reg.guatemala */ /* ---------- "Cerigua Briefs Aug 4-10" ---------- */ CERIGUA WEEKLY BRIEFS, AUGUST 4 - 10, 1991 Police Investigator Murdered The Archbishop's Human Rights Office accused security forces this week of murdering Miguel Merida, head of the National Police criminal investigations department. He was murdered Monday as he left the national police headquarters in Guatemala City. Merida was heading an investigation into last year's murder of anthropologist Myrna Mack. The archbishop's office said the information uncovered incriminates high-level military officers. Merida was also investigating the murder of U.S. businessman Michael Devine by members of the army. Merida knew his life was in danger and believed his investigation into the Mack murder was the reason he was receiving threats and being followed. Human Rights Ombudsman Ramiro de Leon said Merida had contacted his office at least twice during the week before his murder. Days before his death Merida reportedly told the Interior Minister that he feared he would be killed to stop him from continuing his investigations. According to an El Grafico columnist, Interior Minister Hurtado only suggested that he use his weapon to defend himself when off duty. Interior Minister Fernando Hurtado announced on Tuesday that ex-police officer Jesus Guerra Galindo had been arrested for Merida's murder. The archbishop's office has asked international human rights groups to provide protection for Judge Eduardo Coromac and police investigator Julio Perez, who are involved in the Mack case, and for the victim's family. Vice Minister Resigns, Two Police Officers Killed Interior Vice Minister Jose Marti resigned this week as the police force was targetted by violence. Marti had filled the post since the beginning of the Serrano government. Two police officers were murdered early Friday morning by five men traveling in a pickup. Three citizens were injured in the attack as they were passing by in a city bus. The Interior Minister speculated that the murder of the two officers and police investigator Merida was part of a scheme to cause the citizenry to feel unprotected. U.S. Senator Says British Journalist Was Investigating the BCCI During congressional hearings on the dealings of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA) stated on August 1, that "BCCI is also at the center of the complex affair concerning allegations of illegal shipments of American-made arms to Guatemala's vicious military. This last item may very well have been the cause of a very special tragedy. This week a British journalist, Anson Ng Yong, was found shot to death in his Guatemala City apartment. Guatemalan authorities are claiming the murder was the work of common criminals. Independent Guatemalan journalists say that Yong, who had a bullet wound in the head and appeared to have been struck in the neck, had not been robbed, but his personal archives were looted. Three Guatemalan generals are rumored to be behind the illegal U.S. arms shipments. One wonders whether Yong was murdered because his work on BCCI had brought him face- to-face with the truth." Civil Patrols Threaten Researchers of Clandestine Graves, Victims' Relatives The search continues for victims buried in mass graves in areas around Chontala in the Quiche province. Residents told anthropologists and forensic experts where to find yet another grave where thirteen to eighteen bodies are believed to be buried. Human rights groups say there are between 108 and 125 clandestine cemeteries, said the daily El Grafico. Paramilitary groups have threatened three Argentine anthropologists investigating the clandestine graves as well as residents who are assisting the search for buried relatives. According to the National Council of Widows of Guatemala (CONAVIGUA), the Civil Defense Patrollers have threatened twenty-two families whose relatives were buried there in 1982 when Generals Romeo Lucas Garcia and Efrain Rios Montt were in power. CONAVIGUA named Tomas Panto Panto, Tomas Tol Perez, and Juan Perez Cortez as the patrollers responsible for the threats. Human Rights Ombudsman Ramiro de Leon announced that another grave has been found in Solola. Lab results indicate that the eight bodies found were buried there in 1980. Army Kidnaps 22 Persons from Communities in Resistance The Communities in Resistance (CPR) announced that the army plans to launch an attack against thousands of internal refugees living in the northwestern area of the country. Civil patrollers from the San Francisco, Laguna and Amacchel barracks are preparing for the offensive that will target International Red Cross helicopters bringing in children's vaccines and humanitarian aid, according to a CPR communique. The statement also denounced the kidnapping of twenty-two members, including two children, of the Chacaj community in the Chajul district of Quiche. Over recent weeks crops have been burned due to the bombings in areas where the CPR are in constant flight from military persecution - Chacaj, Santa Rosa, and Xeptul. The CPR have demanded to be recognized as civilians and have called on President Serrano to halt the bombings. A Multi-Partite Commission of Guatemalan and international delegates has scheduled a visit to the CPR for this month. Cerezo Investigated in the United States Former president Vinicio Cerezo and current Army Chief of Staff General Edgar Godoy are under investigation in the United States, according to the U.S. daily Baltimore Sun. Loans totalling $43 million were granted from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) to Cerezo's government in 1988-1989. Officials say part of the loans could have been used as hush money during a government probe of arms merchant and coffee smuggler Munther Bilbeisi, reported Time magazine. Cerezo's half-brother Milton and two top-ranking generals have been linked to $420,000 in payoffs in the purchase of three Jordanian Sikorsky helicopters. The Sun says that given the military's inclination toward coup d'etats, the investigations are noteworthy because of the fragile relationship between the current government and the Guatemalan army. Folk Festival Queens Speak Out At the folk festival held in Coban, Alta Verapaz, the reigning indigenous queens received standing ovations for speaking out about the living conditions suffered by indigenous people: poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, starvation wages, and the theft of natural resources. According to the daily Prensa Libre, a representative from Quezaltenango, where Quiche and Mam peoples predominate, said that in order to overcome marginalization, domination, and impoverishment, "the participation of our people is necessary to achieve the incorporation of education, in order to stop being considered illiterate, without this coming to mean the destruction of our essential values and our Mayan culture." Another indigenous woman of predominantly Mam town San Pedro Sacatepequez, in San Marcos, said that in October 1992, the 500th anniversary of the invasion of indigenous lands will be observed. Since the invasion, she said, "the indigenous peoples and the poor of Guatemala and of this continent have resisted the imposition of foreign flags, poverty and injustice." Covenant House--Attacks Denounced, Legal Office Closed Four U.S. legislators and the German Minister of Youth and Women, along with faculty and students from UNESCO's International School, called on the Guatemlan government to stop the attacks against children's shelter Covenant House. Radio broadcast Voice of America (VOA) reported that two U.S. legislators sent a letter to U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala Thomas Stroock expressing concern over incidents in which the Covenant House had been machine-gunned. The VOA also broadcast an interview with Bruce Harris, Covenant House director, who said that last year sixteen street children were murdered. Harris said that asking for police protection was like "asking a wolf to guard the henhouse." It was learned on Wednesday that a juvenile court ordered the closing of the Covenant House's legal office which recently opened to offer assistance to street children. Convicted Police Officers Freed Four police officers convicted of murdering a street child have been set free, according to the director of a shelter for street children in Guatemala City. Director Bruce Harris of the Covenant House told CERIGUA on Thursday that the police officers won an appeal from the Supreme Court last week. The ruling overturned a sentence for murdering 13- year-old Nahaman Carmona Lopez over a year ago. The brutal murder received international attention after Amnesty International published an extensive report on police violence against homeless children surviving in the streets of Guatemala City. The conviction of the four police officers was only the second time in Guatemalan history that members of security forces have been convicted for human rights violations. In the first case, police officers who murdered two university students in the city of Quezaltenango were also convicted and then later freed as well. Army Captain Charged in Devine Murder Back in Prison A military appeals court ruled that there is sufficient evidence to hold Captain Hugo Contreras Alvarado for the murder of U.S. citizen Michael Devine. An appeal was filed by the victim's wife after the army captain was released from prison in June. Carole Ann Devine reportedly requested that Contreras as well as other soldiers implicated in the murder be submitted to a lie detector test. The request was denied, however, on the grounds that it would violate the judicial and human rights of those charged. URNG Meets With UN Security Council Luz Mendez, member of the Political-Diplomatic team of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), met with Ambassador Ricardo Alarcon, chairman of the United Nations Security Council, reported the daily El Grafico. During this special hearing, Mendez exchanged points of view with Alarcon regarding the peace negotiations between the URNG and representatives of the Guatemalan government and the army. The talks are scheduled to continue in mid-August at in a site yet to be announced. Cholera Spreading Minister of Health Miguel Montepeque announced that 25 cases of cholera have been confirmed with 94 cases pending lab results. Most victims live along the Suchiate river in the San Marcos province, according to radio newscast Guatemala Flash. Costa Rica is restricting imports of agricultural products from Guatemala such as apples, avocados, and plums, according to Minister of Economy, Industry, and Trade Gonzalo Fajardo, reported the daily El Grafico. Guerrillas Blow Up Strategic Bridge, Occupy Town Rebels dynamited a bridge built in the late eighties by military engineers between the towns of Santo Tomas and Xalbal in the Ixcan, according to the daily El Grafico. The bridge, measuring thirty-six feet in length and twelve feet wide, connected the Playa Grande military zone in Quiche with six important army barracks. Guerrilla forces also occupied the town of Pueblo Nuevo Vinas in the Santa Rosa province for ten hours. The town was the site of a July 23 skirmish between the local police and a newly emerged guerrilla front, according to a rebel communique. Landless Take Over Property in Guatemala City Around 1,000 persons peacefully occupied areas of the neighborhood Villalobos II in Guatemala City, according to the daily El Grafico. The people took control of the 1,100 plots which they say should have been handed over to them during Cerezo's regime. Payments in advance had been made and the plot numbers had already been assigned to them, the people said. They also had receipts and letters from the National Housing Bank (BANVI) to document their claims. The Neighbors Commission explained that their action was not an invasion but that they were taking possession of what was rightfully theirs. President Serrano, they said, was taking steps to give the plots to families affiliated with his political party, the Solidarity Action Movement (MAS). "We've been living here seven years in these squatter settlements and now that we've made our first payment, they tell us our receipts are invalid. They'll have to take our property away from us over our dead bodies." BANVI officials said the people will not be thrown off the properties. Eleven Bodies Found on Roadside The bodies of ten men and one woman were found on the roadside in the province of Escuintla each with bullet wounds to the head or thorax, reported television newscast Notisiete. The morgue director indicated that the victims were dealt a final bullet in the head. Another Year of Uncensored Reporting On August 8 CERIGUA celebrated its eighth anniversary! We would sincerely like to express our gratitude for your continued support in informing the international community about Guatemala. Thanks for helping us get the word out! ***************** In the U.S. and Canada subscribe to Weekly Briefs by sending check or money order to: ANI PO Box 28481 Seattle, WA 98118 Subscription fees in the U.S. and Canada: $18 for 6 months, $36 for one year. Elsewhere, contact: CERIGUA Apartado Postal 74206 CP 09080 Delegacion Itzapalapa Mexico, D.F. Telephone: 5102320 - FAX 5109061 - Telex (17) 64525 Also please send us your comments and suggestions to the Seattle address or by email to cerisea on PeaceNet.