Is
Mr. Bush turning a blind eye
to killings in Guatemala?
By JONATHAN
POWER
August 15, 2001
LONDON - Proportional to its population more people were
killed and tortured for their beliefs during the 1970s
and 1980s in Guatemala than any other country in the
world. Over the last decade it had seemed to many that
the situation was slowly, but cumulatively improving. But
the last twelve months or so it has started in some
respects to worsen again.
While the country still remains democratic if
imperfectly so, while some judges are slowly gaining a
measure of independence and confidence (but a few live in
fear of their lives), while the army - the main
perpetrator of human rights abuses - has been shrunk in
size, and while the press, always prepared to criticize
the government and the political order, becomes even
stronger and more independent, it is clear that all is
not well in Guatemala. Some would put it stronger than
that and say that powerful elements in the army are
re-engaging their old habits of intimidating and often
killing their habitual critics.
Some, indeed, would go so far to say that the rise in
human rights abuse could be correlated with the winding
down of the Clinton Administration and the changing of
the guard in Washington - as when Ronald Reagan's new
Administration came into office in 1981 it was the cue
for human rights abuses in Guatemala to take off towards
the stratosphere. Reagan made it abundantly clear he was
far more concerned with the advance of communism than he
was with reigning in the Guatemalan army. The U.S.
ambassador to Guatemala, David Chaplin, regularly
prompted his Washington superiors as to what was going on
in the country, but it fell on deaf ears. In February
1984, only a day after he had sent one of his revealing
cables to Washington, he was taken aback to hear that the
Assistant Secretary of State for human rights, Elliott
Abrams, had signed off on a secret report to Congress in
which he had argued that human rights were improving in
Guatemala and that Congress should no longer be inhibited
about the resumption of U.S. security assistance. No
wonder that when the new president of Guatemala, General
Efrain Rios Montt, visited Washington he could dare to
say in his public speech, "We have no scorched earth in
Guatemala, only scorched communists."
Thus today it rather looks as if the new nominations
to high office of Reagan's Central American appointees,
including Elliott Abrams and John Negroponte, are sending
a silent signal, intentional or not, to the Guatemalan
old guard that Washington will look the other way.
In a new report Amnesty International says "human
rights organisations and advocates are increasingly being
targeted….. The prevailing impunity gives a clear
signal that perpetrators can literally continue to get
away with murder. Amnesty is concerned that the
Guatemalan government is in fact encouraging attacks
through ill-considered public statements that have
periodically accused human rights defenders and other
activists of seeking to destabilise the country".
It's just over twenty years since Amnesty issued one
of its most outspoken reports in which it accused the
government of running " a deliberate and longstanding
programme" of torture and murder. It was this report that
drew the world's attention for the first time to the
particular horror of Guatemala. The massacres and murder
were not the work of independent right-wing death squads
as had been maintained but, as Amnesty correctly said, of
special units of the army itself, receiving their orders
directly from the president's office. All through the
Reagan years this was denied, or at least minimised.
When George Bush senior took over he did move to use
his authority to wind down the killings, although it
seems from recent evidence that American clandestine
military support did continue. Only under the
administration of Bill Clinton was the UN encouraged to
investigate past abuses and came up with conclusions that
read like a reprint of the Amnesty report of 1981.
In 1999 on a visit to Guatemala City Mr Clinton made a
public mea culpa, saying, "For the United States it is
important that I state clearly that [American]
support for military forces and intelligence units which
engaged in violence and wide-spread repression was
wrong." And the Washington Post editorialised: "We
Americans need our own truth commission."
It is only five weeks ago that President Alfonso
Portillo of Guatemala met President George Bush. But was
anything made clear about America's intolerance for
winding the clock back? Was anything said to disillusion
the Guatemalans that the appointments of Negroponte and
Abrams don't mean that this Administration will tolerate
what the highly regarded (in Republican circles) Reagan
administration did.
Judging from the record, if anything on these lines
was said you would have needed sophisticated listening
equipment to have heard it. This is not to say that Mr
Bush is about to re-engage in Central America in a
reprise of the advocacy of Mr Reagan that communism had
to be stopped however it were done. The stakes are just
not that high today. But, without a doubt, under Mr Bush
there is a profound sense of benign neglect. Left to its
own devises, without pressure from outside, Guatemala
looks to be in danger of sliding back into its murderous
old habits.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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