Efraín Bámaca, Quetzaltenango, 2009. Everardo.

Everado Lopez lives in Efraín Bámaca, a small community of ex-combatants in Cantón Chichigüitan, just on the other side of the hills from my house. After the civil war officially ended in 1996, a group of 22 families who participated in the war as guerillas got together and bought this small patch of land behind the eastern hills of Quetzaltenango. They named it after Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, the revolutionary leader of the URNG who was captured and permanently disappeared by the military government in the familiar fashion aided by the CIA. Efraín Bámaca the community lies beautifully among cultivated hillsides and fields of corn and cabbage, which almost all of the inhabitants work as day-laborers since their own land contains little fertile land. After five years of building the community, three family houses still remain to be built, but the community no longer has the external support or funding needed to buy the materials. They’ve recently installed electricity, but the community lacks an efficient water solution, a water drainage, and a paved road to avoid swamping during the rainy season – and dust during the dry season. The residents of Efraín Bámaca also dream of one day building a school and perhaps even a small playground for their children, but due to a large communal debt and low income, they need external support in order to take the community towards a sustainable future.

I visited on February 14th, and the image above is my first out of Aperture, a photo editing software I’ll be using from now on. Click on the image to view the large version of the photo along with its caption, this is an option for every own photo that I upload. More to follow on Efraín Bámaca.

Please join the petition at NISGUA.

Dear President Àlvaro Colóm,

I write to ask you to fulfill your promise to combat entrenched impunity in Guatemala. It is unjustifiable that the vast majority of the victims of the armed conflict, as well as victims of current human rights attacks, have yet to see justice for the crimes committed against them.

Although certain cases advanced in 2008, I am concerned that 99% of the atrocities committed during the internal armed conflict remain in impunity due to the failure of the Guatemalan State to effectively investigate and prosecute these crimes. The unit of the human rights prosecutor’s office in charge of crimes of the past has not prosecuted one suspect since it opened in 2005.

Instead, these cases are often stalled in ineffective investigations and legal motions. Judges often take months to issue rulings, and injunctions filed by defense lawyers (amparos) can take years to resolve before the cases even reach the prosecutorial stage.  This process only serves to delay – or completely deny – justice for the survivors.

In the national genocide case filed against Efraín Ríos Montt and his high command, a series of legal motions has delayed the declassification of military documents that could serve as key evidence towards prosecution.  Although a judge ordered their declassification in March of 2007, over one year later the Ministry of the Defense has yet to deliver the military documents to the Attorney General’s Office and the association of survivors.

On February 25, 2008, you publicly stated that military archives should be declassified and handed over to the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office. To date, however, the documents remain classified information in the hands of the military.

Impunity rates for current human rights violations are inextricably linked to the failure to bring the crimes of the past to justice. In 2006 and 2007, the Unit for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Guatemala (UDEFEGUA) registered 466 attacks on human rights defenders, many of whom risked their lives by demanding accountability for crimes of the past. Nonetheless, the human rights prosecutor’s office did not prosecute any suspects in the 49 cases investigated during this period, while only three human rights defenders’ cases were resolved by other offices.  The prosecutors have not only failed to resolve individual cases, but they have also failed to investigate these attacks as part of a systematic pattern and practice designed to impede human rights work.

In the face of alarmingly high levels of impunity and violence, I ask you to fulfill your promise to prioritize the issue. I implore you to support the survivors’ right to truth and justice by ensuring that the military documents be declassified and promptly handed over to the public institutions as ordered. I ask you to advocate for changes to the Injunction Law that would halt the current practice of using legal motions to stall judicial processes. I further urge you to prioritize ongoing evaluations of the Attorney General and the Public Prosecutor’s Office to ensure that the institution be purged of employees linked to organized crime and to guarantee that the effectiveness of the institution significantly improve. Furthermore, I call on you to ensure that the government takes the necessary steps to guarantee the safety of human rights defenders.

Twelve years after the signing of the Peace Accords, the victims of the war deserve justice, just as human rights defenders today deserve to carry out their work without fear of reprisal. Now is the time to take a stand and prove your commitment to ending impunity and strengthening the rule of law in Guatemala and to encourage others in your administration to do the same.

Thank you in advance for your attention to the matter.

Sincerely,

Thomas Elsted

update:
I feel I should clarify that this letter was composed entirely by NISGUA, with a few minor correction by me. If you like, you can sign it here and email it to the presidential office in Guatemala.

En español:
(…)

So Washington reports that an intelligence comittee of the Senate is finally going to conduct an investigation of the CIA policies of detention and interrogation under the Bush administration. Do they mean the special methods of questioning? Do they want to revise the enhanced interrogation techniques, perhaps examine whether someone did something bad? Why fix something that’s not broken? As it turns out, they don’t exactly intend to find out whether the CIA broke any laws, but rather to “learn lessons from the programs and see if there are recommendations to be made for detention and interrogations in the future” … Maybe they’re planning to tidy things up a bit, I’m sure there’s a screw that could be tightened somewhere in there. But the agency will be undergoing scrutiny while it’s busy having its head and both arms stuck into two wars in the Middle East and who knows how many clandestine facilities outside the US for a good (or very bad) reason. CIA director Leon Panetta says CIA officers “should not face prosecution if they were acting on orders in accordance with Bush administration legal opinions”, which is to day, before the investigation beings, the chief is already admitting that members of his staff have been doing nasty stuff worthy of legal action on human rights abuses. But because they “did their job, they did it pursuant to the guidance that was provided them”, as if Bush & co. were a fraternity of friars lecturing schoolboys, and as if we’ve learned nothing from history about the free will … after more than sixty years. But if we have, then surely the findings of the intelligence committee – if it does its job diligently – should fall back on Panetta himself and his superiors … They can probably rest assured that it won’t come that far, though. It seems we’re awfully slow learners.

To make matters worse, “[the Obama administration] having considered the matter, adheres to its previously articulated position” on the rights of detainees in Afghanistan, which continues to defy both logic and the Geneva Conventions. Battlefield detainees held without charges by the United States in Afghanistan are not entitled to constitutional rights to challenge their detention, a predicament even worse than that of the prisoners of Guantánamo. Snafu.

Christopher Anderson, Silicon Forest. Magnum Photos 2007.

I’m not supposed to blog again until I’ve got something ready from my own view, too much time spent reading and clicking and reading and seeing in front of the screen. On Magnum In Motion I found this piece Silicon Forest by Christopher Anderson. Photographs of Akademgorodok, a town created during the Cold War deep within a Siberian forest, and which now services Western companies with computer support. Shortwave radio transmissions on the audio side gives it that vintage Eastern-bloc mood I can’t help but feel a certain sentimentality for … growing up in Northern Europe in the eighties n’ all. Those colours left an everlasting impression on a young child … (The photographs are from 2007)