2 Guatemala Deaths Raise Human Rights Questions

Two leaders of a human rights organization here have been killed in the last two weeks, and another has fled the country out of fear.

The organization, called Mutual Support, was founded last year by the relatives of hundreds of people who have disappeared. Its members have repeatedly petitioned the government to account for the missing.

Hector Orlando Gomez, spokesman for the group, was kidnaped by armed men as he left a meeting March 30. His body was found the next day; he had been shot and his tongue had been cut out. A second leader of the organization died in what friends say was a highly suspicious automobile accident.

The resurgence of violence is a setback for the efforts of Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores to improve his government’s image, to demonstrate that Guatemala has begun to respect human rights.

Mejia led a military coup against Gen. Efrain Rios Montt in August, 1983. He has promised to turn power over to a civilian government after elections next October.

The emergence of Mutual Support has been seen as a positive development, for there had been no human rights organization here since 1980. The events of the past few days, though, have placed the government’s intentions in doubt.

At Gomez’s funeral, attended by several hundred people in the nearby village of Amatitlan, family members and friends blamed the government for his death.

One of those who spoke up at the graveside services was Maria del Rosario Godoy de Cuevas, who along with Gomez and four others was a member of the rights group’s executive committee. In remarks broadcast later on a national television news program, she spoke bitterly of Gomez’s death and said it would not be forgotten.

Last Thursday, Cuevas left home to drive to the supermarket, accompanied by her 21-year-old brother and her 3-year-old son. They never returned.

Family members were summoned to the city morgue not long after midnight the following day, Good Friday, where they identified the bodies of the three. A police spokesman said they were killed when their car went over an embankment in a part of town far from the Cuevas home.

Officially, accident-caused injuries were listed as the cause of death, but family members have been told by doctors that all three died of asphyxiation.

‘Triple Assassination’

Archbishop Prospero Penados del Barrio, who has spoken out often against the violence, has said publicly that he was told that the deaths were caused by asphyxiation. He refers to a “triple assassination.”

Several political parties and newspapers have called for further investigation, but spokesmen for the government have ruled this out. Gustavo Adolfo Lopez Sandoval, the minister of the interior, said, “It is not fair to call this an assassination, since according to official information, it’s just an accident.”

Angel Reyes, another leader of Mutual Support, fled Guatemala and went into exile in a nearby country after a group of heavily armed men came to look for him at his place of work on the day of the three deaths.

“What someone is trying to do is destroy the group--that we are sure of,” said Nineth Garcia, one of the three remaining members of the group’s leadership. Her husband, a young labor leader, disappeared in February, 1984.

Accounting Sought

“All we are asking,” Garcia, 26, said in an interview, “is that the government account for our missing husbands and sons and fathers. We want our families to be whole again. This is all we have ever asked for.”

An American human-rights worker who now lives elsewhere in Central America but has lived on and off in Guatemala for nearly a decade said, “You can’t have something like this going on without the consent of the government--not in Guatemala.”

Although leaders of what was to become Mutual Support met privately with Mejia last summer and received his permission to establish the organization, the government apparently has been uncomfortable with the organization’s presence and tactics.

The group has held a series of marches and sit-ins at government buildings and placed ads in newspapers to draw attention to their problem. Their only stated objective is to find out what happened to the missing people.

According to figures compiled by the U.S. Embassy, 622 people have been listed as missing in the 19 months that Gen. Mejia has held power. Other Western embassies say the number is higher.

3,000 Believed Missing

Members of Mutual Support who declined to be identified said they believe that 3,000 people have disappeared since Mejia took control.

Over the years, disappearances and killings have become a feature of Guatemalan political life. The period under Gen. Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, from 1978 to 1982, was particularly brutal.

The killings, which have involved students, middle-class leaders and union activists, slowed down under the government of Rios Montt, a devout, born-again Christian. But his brutal campaign against leftist insurgents in the Indian highlands of the northwest further tarnished Guatemala’s international reputation on human rights.

Mejia’s government has sought to clean up this record, but just a few days before Gomez was kidnaped and killed, Mejia told a news conference that, in his opinion, Mutual Support received support from “extremists.”

A Western diplomat said that such a remark could be interpreted, in the context of Guatemalan politics, as giving a green light for an attack on the organization.

“They kept needling and needling and needling the government,” the diplomat said. “I’m sorry for what’s happened, but I can’t say I am very surprised.”

The American human-rights worker said he believes that the group has been the victim of some “bad advice” and that it “moved too far too fast.”

“After all,” he said, “this is still Guatemala.”

Government officials such as Lopez Sandoval, the interior minister, have said that Mutual Support is trying to take advantage of the deaths of its members in order to tarnish Guatemala’s image abroad.

U.S. Ambassador Alberto M. Piedra has met privately with Mejia to express his government’s concern about the wave of violence, according to U.S. sources. Piedra and other U.S. officials have consistently warned Guatemalan officials that they must improve their human rights record, particularly if they want to receive U.S. military assistance.

Despite the continuing harassment, Mutual Support plans to proceed with a major demonstration Saturday. The march, which has been planned for weeks, will end in front of the presidential palace. Garcia said the group could not afford to be intimidated by threats or the deaths of its members.

“What we are asking for is very reasonable,” she said. “We want our loved ones back.”