Church Report Says 200,000 Died in Guatemala's Civil War
By EDWARD HEGSTROM
© 1998 Houston Chronicle
latinolink.com
GUATEMALA CITY, April 23, 1998 -- An
extensive investigation has found that 200,000
people -- most of them Maya Indian civilians -- died
or "disappeared'' during Guatemala's civil war,
Catholic Church officials said.
The church's monumental report, to be released
Friday, blames most of the atrocities on the
Guatemalan army. But 10 percent of the massacres
came at the hands of rebels who could be just as
brutal as the military, the report says.
The report was produced by the Human Rights
Office of the Guatemalan church after a three-year
investigation. It marks the first comprehensive
examination of human rights violations committed
during the 36-year war that pitted a U.S.-backed
military government against leftist rebels.
Strict government control of the media during the
height of the conflict in the early 1980s prevented
an accurate accounting of the atrocities until now.
The war ended with a peace accord signed in
December 1996.
Catholic representatives said they conducted the
investigation both to ensure that the victims are
remembered and to try to make sure that history
does not repeat itself.
The 1,400-page report is titled "Guatemala: Never
Again.''
"This is part of the process of restoring dignity to
the victims,'' Ronalth Ochaeta, head of the church's
Human Rights Office, said at a news conference
Thursday. "Those left behind want recognition that
their deceased relatives were not just animals.''
After conducting 6,500 interviews, mostly in 15
different Maya languages, Catholic investigators
concluded that 150,000 people died during the civil
war. An additional 50,000 were taken away and
never seen again.
The church's estimate of the 200,000 killed or
missing is 60,000 higher than most previous
estimates. More than 90 percent of the victims were
unarmed civilians. Three out of four were Maya
Indians.
The church said soldiers or paramilitary allies of the
government committed 90 percent of the human
rights violations. But they blamed the Guatemalan
National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) for 10
percent.
The rebels' massacre methods were exactly the
same as the army's, said Edgar Gutierrez, who
headed the church investigation."They wanted to
strike terror into the population and keep them from
joining the other side.''
A separate international panel, formally known as
the Historic Clarification Commission, will release
its own report in July.
But under the terms of the peace treaty signed
between the leftist rebels of the URNG and the
government, the international truth commission will
not be allowed to name those responsible for the
killings. And the commission was given just six
months to complete its work.
Worried that the truth commission will not have the
time or the authority to reveal enough about the
war, the Catholic Church and other human rights
organizations began conducting their own
investigations some time ago.
Though it technically began in 1960, the
Guatemalan civil war had its roots in a 1954 coup
organized and led by the CIA. The coup replaced a
left-leaning democratic government with military
dictators.
The vast majority of the atrocities occurred in 1981
and 1982, under the administrations of generals
Romeo Lucas Garcia and Efrain Rios Montt.
The rebels had established strongholds among the
Maya Indians of the central highlands, and the
government responded with a "scorched earth''
counter-insurgency program designed to weaken the
rebels by forcing the peasants of the region to flee.
Entire villages were burned, their inhabitants
massacred or forced to cross into Mexico.
Yet both the army and the rebels deny
responsibility for the atrocities.
Ochaeta said the report also will offer a thorough
evaluation of the Catholic Church's own role in the
war, though he did not elaborate.
It is commonly known that the church was closely
allied with the conservative governing elite during
the 1950s and 1960s. Church leaders openly
supported the 1954 coup.
But many church leaders turned to the left in the
latter part of the war and some even helped the
rebels. Twenty Catholic priests were assassinated
during the war, and hundreds of lower-ranking
Catholic workers also died.
As part of its recommendations, the Catholic
Church called on the government to indemnify
living victims, though it did not specify how much
this might cost.
The church asked that public parks and streets
named after former dictators be renamed, and that
their statues be removed.
>>>Pretty much everyone on both sides, including the clerics, are
>>>implicated in the massacre. |
