Truth and justice
February 14 will mark four years since indigenous q'eqchi' leader Ramiro Choc was kidnapped and illegally detained by the Guatemalan government. He was not arrested, but pulled off a bus by soldiers who said they would kill him. When news of his illegal detention became public, he was kept alive and held for several days in a secret location.
Elliot Abrams, a former high level State Department official during the 1980s, testified last week that the Reagan administration knew that Argentina's military junta was systematically stealing babies from murdered and jailed democracy activists and giving them to right-wing families friendly to the regime. An article by Cyril Mychalejko.
Human rights groups celebrated on Friday after a court in Guatemala ruled that the former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who presided over one of Latin America's bloodiest civil wars, will face trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The struggle against impunity, and for truth, memory and justice for the genocide in Guatemala continues, both in Guatemala and in the USA. The US government is partially responsible for Guatemala's genocide and State terrorism against its own population in the late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.
A Guatemalan judge has ordered a former military dictator, Efraín Ríos Montt, to appear in court on Thursday, the first step in a process that could lead to his being tried on genocide charges and to a reopening of the darkest chapter in Guatemala's brutal 36-year civil war.
