U.N. Report Details State of Terror in Guatemala

In a scathing report, the special United Nations mission to Guatemala has painted a depressing landscape of human rights violations in the Central American country, accusing government agents of condoning and even taking part in political killings, death threats and torture.

The March report to the U.N. General Assembly makes it clear that contempt for human rights--recently given attention in the case of the murder in detention of American lawyer Jennifer Harbury’s guerrilla leader husband--is still prevalent in Guatemala.

Leonardo Franco, an Argentine lawyer and veteran U.N. official who heads the mission, wrote that “a pervasive climate of violence” exists in Guatemala with “those responsible for the administration of justice and public security . . . widely perceived as ineffective.” “The government has not adequately guaranteed . . . the right to be free from torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” Franco said, “and cases have been verified in which military and police officers appear to be implicated.”

The General Assembly, which sent the mission to Guatemala last November, is expected to pass a resolution next week extending its life for at least six months.

The mission was the first fruit of peace negotiations in Mexico City between the Guatemalan government of President Ramiro de Leon Carpio and the guerrilla rebels who make up the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (known as URNG from its initials in Spanish). The two sides signed an agreement a year ago accepting a U.N. mission on human rights. Although Jean Arnault of France, a U.N. mediator, has been shuttling between the two in Mexico City, there has been no further agreement on any issue.

In the report, Franco makes only passing reference to Harbury’s slain husband, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, a URNG leader known as Commandante Everardo. Bamaca was evidently killed soon after he was captured by the army in 1992.

In view of the reputation of the Guatemalan army and police for their use of terror, little had been expected of the U.N. mission. While Franco reported that some of his human rights workers had been under surveillance by government agents, he appeared unafraid to set down some of the worst abuses in grim detail.

He said that his team had received 1,000 complaints between Nov. 21 and Feb. 21 and had accepted 288 for investigation. Of these, 100 involved what Franco called violations of the right to life: extrajudicial executions, attempted executions and death threats.

In one example, Franco cited the case of Manuel Nix Morales and Gaspar Chumil Chumil, two Indian leaders murdered by unidentified assailants at the end of a religious festival in the town of Chiche last Nov. 28. The U.N. official said that police, accusing the victims of being thieves, had failed to carry out a thorough investigation. In fact, he went on, bullets had been removed from the body of one victim so there could be no ballistics test.