[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 136 (Tuesday, September 30, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1929-E1930]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       HUMAN RIGHTS IN GUATAMALA

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 30, 2003

  Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Speaker, on July 14, Guatemalan Constitutional Court 
justices made history by declaring null and void two previous court 
rulings banning infamous former dictator Efrain Rios Montt from seeking 
presidential office. Efrain Rios Montt, the retired brigadier general 
and current head of Guatemala's national legislature, has been 
universally condemned for waging a ``scorched earth'' campaign against 
indigenous Mayan civilians during his 1982-1983 presidency. Some of the 
worst abuses in Guatemala's brutal 36-year civil war occurred during 
Rios Montt's rule. Wisely enough, the drafters of Article 186 of 
Guatemala's 1985 Constitution engrossed a ban to prevent leaders 
responsible for staging military coups from ever again seeking the 
Guatemalan presidency. Yet Rios Montt, who came to power through just 
such a coup in March of 1982, recently obtained a favorable ruling from 
Guatemala's highest court despite this earlier provision. He managed 
this by using his influence to pack the court with additional members 
who were personally loyal to him. In addition, he sought to legitimate 
his candidacy by claiming that the 1985 Constitution cannot be applied 
retroactively to actions taken three years before it was enacted.
  The State Department repeatedly has stated that Rios Montt's 
continued involvement in Guatemalan politics is an obstacle to 
effective U.S. relations with that country. In fact, events would seem 
to indicate that Rios Montt's candidacy is an equal threat to domestic 
stability within Guatemala; a number of weeks ago, mass protest in 
support of the ex-dictator's candidacy, clearly manipulated by Rios 
Montt and other leaders of his party, turned violent as mobs rushed 
into government buildings and seized them, including the Supreme Court. 
Since the Bush administration is so concerned with human rights in 
Iraq, what about Guatemala? Regional alliances such as the proposed 
U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement are bound to be jeopardized 
by Rios Montt's self-serving insistence on seeking the presidency, even 
at the country's democratic prospects. We as a body must strive to 
understand the potential implications and the high costs of Rios 
Montt's continued involvement in Guatemalan politics if we are to 
accelerate our steps towards the goal of promoting effective relations 
with the Central American region.
  On September 15, the United States recertified Guatemala, reversing a 
decision made in January due to the country's consistently poor efforts 
to stem the northward flow of narcotics that end up in our streets. 
Circumstances, however, suggest that the recertification was motivated 
not so much by any improvement in Guatemala's drug interdiction 
efforts, but by the Bush administration's ceaseless search for the 
expansion of free trade, even if it costs the U.S. hundreds of 
thousands of solid jobs. The Bush administration, eager to enact its 
Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) proposal, seems to have 
been responding to certain pressures to renew Guatemala's certification 
whatever its justification; twenty-one of our esteemed colleagues took 
the principled step of writing to the White House and saying that they 
would not vote for CAFTA without such recertification, and Guatemala, 
home to Central America's largest population and most formidable 
economy, would not likely approve the trade agreement if it remained 
decertified. This leads one to wonder, then, what the certification 
process and the war on drugs are really about, as the controversial and 
inequitable specter of free trade has clearly taken precedent.
  The following very timely memoranda on Guatemala's many problems were 
authored by Molly Maas and Jessica Leight, research associates at the 
highly respected Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs 
(COHA), a non-partisan organization that has long been committed to 
addressing issues associated with human rights, democracy and economic 
justice throughout the Western Hemisphere. COHA has been referred to by 
Senator Edward Kennedy in the Congressional Record as ``one of our 
Nation's most respected bodies of scholars and policymakers.''

  Rios Montt Declared Eligible To Run in Guatemala's Upcoming Election

                    (Jessica Leight and Molly Maas)

       On Tuesday, July 14, one of the most brutal dictators in 
     modern Guatemalan history, General Efrain Rios Montt, was 
     declared a legitimate candidate for the November presidential 
     elections by the country's highest court. Since Guatemala 
     gained its independence from Spain in 1821, this largely poor 
     Central American nation has suffered under a series of 
     foreign rulers and pathological homegrown despots. Yet, 
     arguably, none of its leaders have been more infamous than 
     Rios Montt, who seized power in a 1982 coup and presided over 
     an unremittingly harsh dictatorship for eighteen months until 
     a counter-coup installed General Oscar Humberto Mejia 
     Victores as the country's military leader. Today, Guatemala's 
     official Commission for Historical Clarification labels 
     atrocities committed under Montt's regime as ``genocide,'' 
     and impartial observers argue that the ex-dictator was 
     responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in the 
     country's 36-year civil war, including tortures, massacres, 
     the destruction of hundreds of indigenous communities, and 
     illegal detentions and murders of human rights advocates and 
     indigenous leaders.


                 rios montt's quest for the presidency

       Since his fall from power in 1983, Rios Montt has twice 
     attempted to run for the Guatemalan presidency, in 1990 and 
     in 1995. Each time, he has been blocked by the country's 
     courts on the grounds that Article 186 of the 1985 
     Constitution forbids the candidacy of all former coup 
     leaders, a provision that was expressly designed to deter a 
     presidential bid from Rios Montt. Despite these previous 
     dismissals, however, the ruling FRG party, which controls the 
     legislature as well as the presidency, once again nominated 
     Rios Montt as its presidential candidate this past May, and 
     the Constitutional Court--the nation's highest judicial 
     authority--approved his candidacy on July 14. The decision in 
     this case was blatantly biased, as the current court was 
     especially expanded, i.e., ``packed'' with Rios Montt 
     supporters. The president of the Constitutional Court, Mario 
     Guillermo Ruiz Wong, is the former interior minister of the 
     current FRG administration of President Alfonso Portillo, 
     while another justice served as Rios Montt's personal lawyer. 
     Three of the four judges who voted in favor of the ex-
     dictator have links to Portillo's administration.
       Following this ruling, a lower court, the Supreme Court of 
     Justice, issued a contradictory injunction that temporarily 
     suspended Rios Montt's candidacy. In response, protests 
     rocked the capital on Thursday, July 24, with thousands of 
     former beneficiaries of Montt's dictatorship joining more 
     recent recruits to his rightwing cause in the streets of 
     Guatemala City. Though FRG leaders and Rios Montt himself 
     vehemently denied any role in organizing or even encouraging 
     the demonstrations, the protest was marked by a suspicious 
     lack of spontaneity. Pro-FRG peasants were trucked in from 
     across the country by organizers wearing such masks to 
     conceal their identity, and the entire operation had the mark 
     of a well-planned and well-orchestrated demonstration of 
     political intimidation.
       Most damning for the FRG and the Portillo administration 
     was the lack of effort on the part of the police to control 
     violence by the protesters, as well as the army's refusal to 
     intervene even after President Portillo announced on radio 
     and television on Thursday afternoon that he had ordered the 
     armed forces out ``to guarantee respect of private property 
     and the physical security of persons, as well as the defense 
     of human rights.'' Though the demonstrators dispersed after 
     receiving instructions to do so from Rios Montt on Friday 
     morning, the capital continues to wait in fear for a return 
     of the usually armed encapuchados. Perhaps even more 
     alarmingly, the government's commitment to the preservation 
     of basic public order, as well as its control over the armed 
     forces--largely unreformed following decades of unrestricted 
     and brutal war against the guerrillas--remain in grave doubt. 
     Having only so recently emerged from forty years of two 
     devastating civil war which cost upwards of 200,000 lives, 
     Guatemala seems on

[[Page E1930]]

     the point of lurching back into its old habits of blood and 
     gore, in a new era of mob rule.


                  u.s. chilly on subject of rios montt

       The U.S., along with the United Nations, has been notably 
     critical of the human rights abuses that continue to plague 
     Guatemala's fragile democracy. The State Department condemned 
     the riots and the lack of effort by the authorities to 
     control the violence. Earlier, State Department spokesman 
     Richard Boucher had indicated his disapproval of Rios Montt's 
     candidacy, asserting that should Rios Montt be elected, 
     ``realistically, in light of Mr. Rios Montt's background, it 
     would be difficult to have the kind of relationship that we 
     would prefer.'' This followed statements earlier in the year 
     by U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala John Hamilton that noted a 
     troubling lack of compliance on the part of the government 
     with the 1996 UN-brokered peace accord. In an admirable 
     display of candor about the deteriorating situation in 
     Guatemala, Hamilton stated that, ``My government shares the 
     Guatemalan people's concern that today, more than six years 
     after the end of the armed conflict, there are still serious 
     violations of human rights.''
       It is crucially important that the U.S. maintain this 
     strong stance in opposition to the candidacy of such a brutal 
     ex-dictator and avoid the temptation to paper over the crimes 
     of Rios Montt in order to ensure Guatemala's inclusion in the 
     upcoming Central American Free Trade Agreement negotiations, 
     scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. Last 
     January, the Bush administration announced its decision to 
     decertify Guatemala for insufficient progress in the war on 
     drugs. Subsequently, it made use of a ``vital national 
     interest waiver'' to continue to provide economic aid to the 
     country in spite of the decertification. While continuance of 
     such assistance provides some valuable leverage for the U.S. 
     to exercise, as it seeks to pressure the Guatemalan 
     government to bring human rights violators to justice, rein 
     in corruption and ensure an orderly democratic transition 
     after the November elections, this is the case only if the 
     White House indicates that it is prepared to advance the 
     country's democratization. If the White House wishes to 
     demonstrate that its concern for human rights extends beyond 
     Iraq, then there can be no more appropriate task than to 
     facilitate the unhindered operation of justice in Guatemala, 
     a country that has seen precious little of it up to now.

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