‘The Great Controversy’: Guatemalan relatives lose hope of justice | Court Matters

Guatemala City, Guatemala – Marcia Mendez did not stop looking for her sister.

Now, decades after Luz Haydee’s disappearance from Guatemalan troops, justice may be at hand, with a Guatemalan judge this month ordering a trial in the 1980’s.

“For us it is already the front end,” Mendez told Al Jazeera outside the courthouse in Guatemala City following the court last week.

Luz Haydee Mendez Calderon was arrested and reported missing in 1984 – one of the protagonists 45,000 people are missing during the civil war in Guatemala. About 200,000 people were killed in the war in 1960-1996.

At the time, Mendez Calderon was the secretary of state for the Guatemalan Labor Party, which was secretly forced after the United States government aided the party in 1954 and became one of the militants who fought for 36 years.

She was a mother of two. Her nine-year-old daughter was raped while in custody, and along with her younger brother was arrested and tortured for several days. The children came back but their mother did not.

In 1999, published documents encouraged families to search for the truth.

The Diario Militar, or Death Squad Diary, records the abduction, torture, disappearance and murder of 183 people, including Mendez Calderon, between 1983 and 1985. Wise military records include a section containing 183 lists, with their names, Alliance, photo , date and place of theft, and much more.

On June 9, a Guatemalan judge ordered six former military officers to be tried for their actions in the Death Squad Diary – an idea welcomed by relatives of abusers, who also claimed the remains of their loved ones had been found and returned.

‘It seemed impossible’

Most – but not all – of the victims in the Death Squad Diary were members of the armed forces and audiences, student group leaders, union leaders, writers, and other critics. Some were just children.

Often, victims spend weeks in jail and then executed, according to the document. So far, the remains of only eight of the dead have been unearthed, including six found in secret cemeteries in the former military barracks west of Guatemala’s capital city.

All six defendants were charged with felony criminal mischief, and five of them were charged with felony criminal mischief. Both are charged with murder, attempted murder or both, for the murder. The lawsuit relates to 20 people involved, based on eyewitness testimony and documentation obtained over the past two decades.

“It’s a victory that we got here after almost 40 years in the war,” said Mendez, a judge. For many years it seemed impossible to us. ”

Marcia Mendez (center) and other relatives of those forced to flee to Guatemala put up a sign asking, ‘Where is she?’ [Sandra Cuffe/Al Jazeera]

Truth Commission

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees concluded in 1999 that Guatemala’s military and the military were responsible for more than 90% of the horrors of the civil war. More than 80% of the victims were Indian Indians, most of whom killed more than 600 victims.

The Truth Commission dismissed government officials in a riot, and the domestic courts have ruled in favor of a series of high-profile decisions. Military officials are also awaiting sentencing, forced labor, and other crimes against humanity, especially in rural areas.

In contrast, most of the victims of the Diary Squad Diary were citizens of Guatemala City. The urban activities were connected by military intelligence built by the President High Command, according to protesters.

“That was an obvious step forward, which continued to increase global warming,” said Francisco Sanchez, who was nine years old at the time of the abduction of his aunt Mendez Calderon.

“I think it’s a privilege because very few win [into the courts]. That is 183 of the 45,000 people, ”he said on Wednesday in a courtroom, where he and others posted steps and photos of the victims of the Death Squad Diary.

After the 1996 Peace Treaty, Sanchez and other children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the missing formed the HIJOS group to continue the generations to fight for justice. He set up loudspeakers outside Wednesday to spread on a court appearance and set up firefighters while Judge Miguel Angel Galvez read out the charges.

The next day, Galvez detained the seven defendants, and ordered them to be detained pending trial. Galvez gave prosecutors three months to continue their investigation and arranged for talks in mid-September.

Others were arrested

The six former soldiers may not be the only ones to sue.

Eleven former military and police officers were arrested on May 27, and 12 were arrested when they appeared in court. Six were first tried and sentenced, according to Galvez’s opinion of June 9.

The first hearing of the six other detainees arrested on May 27 is awaiting and clarification as to whether they too have been convicted. The remaining six are in jail at some medical facilities while others are detained in other parts of the country and not relocated to headquarters during the first hearing.

“We were shocked,” said Antonio Rustrian, whose uncle Manuel Ismael Salanic Chiquil was forced to appear in the Death Squad Diary, said of the arrest. “To me it was symbolic, because the day of the arrest was the day to commemorate the death of my grandmother,” he told Al Jazeera outside the court.

The missing relatives in Guatemala have been fighting for years to find answers [Sandra Cuffe/Al Jazeera]

His grandfather Rustrian, who died of natural causes in 2014, dedicated 30 years of his life to the cause of truth and justice. Shortly after his son’s death, he formed the Mutual Support Group (GAM) and later joined the Association of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared of Guatemala (FAMDEGUA).

“The struggle against history [have] I always live in my family, “said Rustrian, 25, who was born more than a decade after the death of his uncle.” It has given me a sense of security since I was a child. “

Salanic Chiguil was 18 years old when he and three other young students who were studying to become teachers disappeared forcibly one night in 1984. Before his arrest, Salanic’s captors tortured him with electric shocks in front of his relatives; he also abused his younger brother and beat his father and uncle, according to the family.

“The ongoing lawsuit is important because it reveals how the government handled the situation – it is very brutal. It is a history that needs to be addressed and there must be justice so that it is not repeated,” said Rustrian, a member of the HIJOS.

Others push back

Armed forces and other right-wing politicians continue to deny the allegations, however.

After retiring officers were arrested late last month in the Death Squad Diary, President Alvaro Arzu sent the message, calling them “warriors” and “defending the country and saving us from communism.”

Within two weeks, nine members of the House of Representatives proposed that the case be settled. The money will be used for restitution, release of former members of prisons and military personnel and others awaiting trial.

The corresponding amnesty law enacted in 2017 sparked protests over the past few months and challenged the states as soon as they finished reading Congress in 2019. The Constitutional Court of Justice finally ruled against the law and ordered it to be adhered to.

A woman walks past a wall with pictures of people missing in Guatemala City’s 2019 civil war in Guatemala City [File: Saul Martinez/Reuters]

If the new petition goes ahead, it will no doubt also set up demonstrations by traditional and legal leaders and survivors as well as their affected relatives. The Guatemalan government has not commented on the new pardon.

In the meantime, many groups are looking forward to what has happened in the Dead Squad Diary. “We see in the end all that we have done,” Mendez said, wearing a picture of his sister on a sign around his neck.

“We are saddened and overjoyed,” he said, adding that many of the parents of the victims had died before seeing their missing children’s cases go to court. “We cry a lot,” Mendez said, “because of the joy, the anger, and the emotions of all kinds.”