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Today's
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October
6, 2003
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorcese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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October
6, 2003
Rios Montt and the
Guatemalan Genocide Trials
Ex-Dictator's
Campaign Threatens Justice
By
NICOLE GAMBLE
The Guatemalan Constitutional Court's recent decision
to allow ex-dictator Gen. Efrain Rios Montt to run for president
in 2004 could be disastrous for the indigenous communities and
human rights workers trying to bring him to justice for acts
of genocide in the early 1980s.
On July 14, the Constitutional Court
voted 4-3 to allow Rios Montt's candidacy in the election slated
for Nov. 9. A run-off election was set for Dec. 28, should no
one candidate score a majority.
The courts had previously ruled to deny
his eligibility twice before, in 1990 and 1995. According to
Article 186 of the 1985 Constitution, leaders of coup d'etats
are not eligible to run for president. Moreover, to prevent powerful
political leaders from undoing this Article, an additional caveat
was included in the provision stipulating that it cannot be amended.
However, the Achilles heel of Article 186 may be what Rios Montt
and his supporters have long argued: that the 1985 law cannot
be applied retroactively.
Rios Montt came to power by coup in March
of 1982 and ruled through August of 1983, when his defense minister
deposed him. He currently is president of the Guatemalan Congress.
The Constitutional Court's decision has sparked heated controversy,
with many claiming that the bench was stacked in Rios Montt's
favor. Since 1995, Rios Montt's party, the Guatemalan Republican
Front (FRG), has controlled the appointments of several justices.
Additionally, what should have been a random lottery process
for selecting the justices to hear the case regarding Rios Montt's
eligibility was in fact conducted in private by the Constitutional
Court's president, a former minister in the FRG government and
childhood friend of current President Alfonso Portillo.
In a recent report from the Guatemalan
newspaper Prensa Libre, Anabella de Len, a council member of
the Gran Alianza Nacional (GANA) political party responded to
the decision by claiming that all the legal processes in the
country have been "strangled."
Years of Genocide
This is not the first time that ex-dictator
Rios Montt's actions have been shrouded in controversy. According
to human rights organizations both in Guatemala and internationally,
Rios Montt has long been known as one of the worst human rights
abusers in Latin America, and his government presided over some
of the worst acts of genocide in Latin American history. Guatemala's
civil war produced more casualties than the so-called "dirty
wars" of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Argentina, and Chile combined.
As dictator of Guatemala, Rios Montt
carried out what is known as the "scorched earth" policy.
This policy was first established by the man he overthrew, former
dictator Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia, who was president from 1978
to 1982. In the scorched earth campaign, the indigenous Mayans
were not only subjected to torture, rape, and execution, but
were also forced to flee their homelands into the highlands with
insufficient means for survival. Many of those fortunate enough
to survive massacres died later from starvation, hypothermia,
disease, or bombardment by army helicopters.
The scorched earth campaign purposefully
meant to leave few, if any, Mayan survivors. Its henchmen spared
no-one. Over 300,000 children were orphaned. Pregnant women had
their unborn babies torn from their wombs without anesthesia
in hopes of what was termed "destroying the seed."
Homes and crops were also destroyed, and water sources were poisoned.
At the same time, 1 million Guatemalans were displaced and many
forced into exile. By the end of the Rios Montt and Lucas Garcia
regimes, Guatemalan security forces had massacred approximately
132,000 Guatemalan civilians and razed an estimated 440 Mayan
villages.
Indigenous, Human
Rights Groups Unite for Justice
In 1997, a UN-sponsored Truth Commission
published a report that implicated the Lucas Garcia and Rios
Montt regimes in years of genocide, however the report did not
identify perpetrators by the Catholic name. The Catholic Church
subsequently initiated an additional truth commission to investigate
the deaths and bear witness to the trauma.
The Catholic Church's Recovery of Historical
Memory Project (REHMI) Report confirmed the conclusions of the
UN Truth Commission and went beyond the previous report to explicitly
accuse Lucas Garcia, Rios Montt, and their respective military
high commanders of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Following the findings of both the UN
and the Catholic Church, the 23 indigenous Mayan communities
that suffered the brunt of the scorched earth campaigns have
unified as in the Association for Justice and Reconciliation
(AJR) to condemn the actions of the state under the two dictators.
Aided by the Center for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH), the
Mayan communities have filed two unprecedented complaints, against
Lucas Garcia in May 2000, and against Rios Montt in June 2001.
Both also name members of the military high commands under the
dictators.
AJR and CALDH based their legal complaints
against both the regimes on the fact that since 1973, the Guatemalan
Criminal Code allows for the prosecution of individuals suspected
of genocide. Articles 376 and 378 define the legal basis for
prosecuting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Article 376 reflects international laws by adopting almost verbatim
the prohibition of genocide included in the 1948 UN Convention
for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Status of the Case
in Guatemalan Courts
"Genocide is hard to prove,"
stated Christina Lauer de Perez, an attorney at CALDH. Consequently,
the case is still in the investigative phase. Since May 2000,
CALDH and the special prosecutor for the Attorney General's Office
have been interviewing the 101 survivors and witnesses to the
atrocities committed in the communities represented in the AJR.
With depositions from the 23 villages completed, CALDH, AJR,
and the special prosecutors are merely waiting for the additional
physical evidence before bringing the case to trial.
Before the testimonial phase of the case,
investigators carried out numerous exhumations. Teams of forensic
anthropologists worked at various massacre sites searching for
anything from clothing scraps to ballistic evidence or military
weapons left behind, which would provide evidence of military
involvement in the massacres. Forensic reports from all of the
exhumation sites have not yet been completed, but CALDH hopes
to receive them by the end of this year.
Additionally, CALDH is still waiting
for reports from academic specialists in the specific regions
of the massacres. These reports will provide important information
on the context of the massacres and will be used to show patterns
in the systematic killings. Currently, reports for three out
of the five regions in question have been completed and the remaining
two are expected by the end of the year.
An assessment of the physical, mental,
and emotional harm experienced by the survivors and eyewitnesses
to the massacres is being undertaken by the Community Studies
and Psycho-Social Action Team (ECAP), a mental health organization
in Guatemala. The report is expected to be completed by November.
CALDH and AJR aim to have the cases on
trial by the end of the year. "We are into the final investigations,"
Lauer commented. "We would expect by the end of the year
to have enough evidence to initiate the trial." She said
the goal is attainable, providing Rios Montt is defeated in the
presidential campaign. Were Rios Montt to win the upcoming election,
his immunity as a democratically elected president would make
it nearly impossible to press charges.
Deteriorating Respect
for Human Rights
The Guatemalan Human Right's Ombudsman's
office released a June 2003 report highlighting the steady increase
in violent deaths over the past four years, nation-wide, culminating
in 12 homicides a day. Most recently, the assassination of several
prominent journalists has added to the atmosphere of repression
in the country.
Human Rights Watch reported that incidents
of political violence rose in 2002. Although political violence
is not always state-sponsored, the impunity granted government
officials plays a major role in the mounting violence. In addition
to fomenting abuses, rampant impunity has caused the Guatemalan
people to lose faith in the judicial system and turn to public
lynching. According to Amnesty International, between 1986 and
2002, there were 482 cases of lynching.
This lack of faith in the judicial system,
along with the system's limited capacity for investigation and
prosecution, has serious implications for the genocide cases
against Rios Montt and Lucas Garcia. The budget of the Attorney
General's Office is so small that most prosecutors have enormous
caseloads. Attorney General Carlos de Len admits that his office
has coverage in only 10% of the national territory, with almost
no representation in the places from which more than 80% of the
complaints are received. Prosecutors are overworked and regularly
intimidated, threatened, or abused. The same special prosecutor
is assigned to both the Rios Montt case and the Lucas Garcia
case, a fact that has hindered AJR and CALDH's efforts to move
the cases through quickly. Moreover, the courts consistently
fail to resolve judicial appeals in a timely manner, the army
and state generally refuse to cooperate, and the intimidation
of witnesses continues to be a normal occurrence.
Given the current human rights climate,
the witnesses' families are in constant danger. Recently the
son of Otoniel de la Roca Mendoza, a key witness before the Inter-American
Human Rights Court in the case of disappeared guerrilla leader
Efrain Bamaca, has been subject to acts of intimidation and death
threats.
In response to the gravity of the situation
the Guatemalan state, the UN and the Organization of American
States (OAS) jointly formed the Commission to Investigate Illegal
Armed Groups and Clandestine Security (CICIACS) in March of 2003.
Human rights groups consider the creation of CICIACS a positive
step toward identifying and dismantling organizations with extensive
records of human rights violations. However, for witnesses and
survivors to feel safe in testifying against political and military
leaders, the systemic problems of impunity, corruption, and state-sponsored
violence must be addressed as well.
International Support
Essential
According to CALDH, international support
is essential for convicting both dictators. In cooperation with
the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA, CALDH has recently
launched an international postcard campaign. Concerned citizens
in hundreds of cities across the United States, Canada, and the
UK are sending postcards to the Guatemalan Attorney General's
Office to denounce the actions of Lucas Garcia and Rios Montt
and to demand a transparent, expeditious trial in Guatemala.
The postcards have been collected in Guatemala for presentation
to the attorney general in a public forum this autumn.
Proving that election fraud is still
a very real concern, the UN, the OAS, the European Union, as
well as many international and Guatemalan civil society organizations
will be conducting formal observations of the Guatemalan elections.
Currently, Rios Montt lags in polls by only 3.3%.
Nicole Gamble served as the summer coordinator of the GHRC
genocide case campaign ghrc-usa@ghrc-usa.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorcese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
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