Kelsey Alford-Jones is the Director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA
“Justice is a right for victims and contributes to rule of law in our country. We believe that for a true peace to exist in Guatemala there must first be justice,” said Guatemalan Judge Yassmin Barrios. She declared General Efraín Ríos Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity on Friday May 10, a day that will be etched forever in Guatemala’s collective memory.
Ríos Montt was convicted of masterminding and overseeing the massacre of 1,771 Ixil Mayans in the department of El Quiché, as well as the forced displacement of 29,000 people, and 1,485 acts of sexual violence and acts of torture during the early 1980s. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison and was ordered into police custody. His director of military intelligence, José Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, was absolved of both crimes...
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by Jennifer Johnson
on May 09, 2013
Migrants in transit through Mexico suffer from pervasive violence – threats, physical abuse, kidnapping, murder, extortion – at the hands of criminal groups or complicit and corrupt public officials. In suit, the brave defenders who provide humanitarian assistance and denounce abuses against migrants find themselves under attack, enduring harassment, death threats, violence, and smear campaigns.
In 2012, LAWGEF’s Executive Director Lisa Haugaard and I, Senior Associate for Mexico Policy Jenny Johnson, travelled to Saltillo, Coahuila in northern Mexico and Tenosique, Tabasco in southern Mexico as part of an international observation mission sponsored by Project Counselling Service to meet with migrant defenders from those regions. During a week of intense discussions, we heard testimony after testimony describing threats and extraordinarily difficult security conditions that jeopardized these defenders’ ability to carry out the important work necessary to protect this vulnerable population.
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by Ruth Isabel Robles
on April 30, 2013
As President Obama prepares to sit down for meetings with President Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico and other fellow elected leaders from the Americas at the Summit of the Central American Integration System (SICA) in Costa Rica, over 145 civil society organizations from 10 countries throughout the Americas, including the Latin America Working Group, sent a letter to their respective presidents urging them to address their concerns regarding the dire human rights crisis in the region. Citing an increase in violence and human rights violations, the letter calls for a shift away from the failed militarized security policies which have exacerbated violence and human rights concerns in the region towards policies that address the root causes of violence.
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:2013, Being Better Neighbors towards Latin America, Blog, Blog Posts, Blog Posts, Guatemala, Honduras, LAWG & Nongovernmental Letters, Memos, and Statements, Mexico, Promote Justice for Mexico and the Borderlands, Ruth Isabel Robles
by Omar Martinez
on April 29, 2013
Time sure flies by. You and the LAWG Colombia team have had no time to rest, but when your goals to change U.S.-Colombia policy are as lofty as ours, we don’t have time to pause.
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by Guest Blogger, Vivian Mannerud President, Airline Brokers
on April 26, 2013
April 27, 2013, will mark the one-year anniversary of the domestic terrorist attack on my offices in Coral Gables, Florida. Three incidiary devices were put inside my office in the pre-dawn hours of the morning. The effects were total destruction; everything was reduced to ashes. As I watched the terrorst act in Boston, I could not help but find similarities but also differences in comparing it to my office fire bombing. Let me be clear, I am in no way equating the two acts, as the one in Boston was of much more significance and caused more destruction to the people, the city, and our country. But here is what I learned. Both bombings, Boston and my office, were carried out because of hate. I was lucky that no one died at my office, although the potential was there...
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by Ruth Isabel Robles
on April 25, 2013
Just a week before President Obama’s first visit to Mexico since President Peña Nieto assumed office, 24 Members of Congress sent a letter on April 23 rd to newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry with a clear request -- “make the defense of human rights a central part of the bilateral agenda with our neighbor.”
This letter, co-sponsored by Representative Moran (D-VA) and Representative Poe (R-TX), reflects bi-partisan concern about “the persistence of grave human rights violations in Mexico.” President Pena Nieto has expressed his commitment to human rights since assuming office on December 1, 2012, noting that one of Mexico’s greatest challenges is to make sure that “rights established on paper become reality.” These representatives underscore the scope and severity of challenges that lay ahead, noting “a five-fold increase in complaints—from 534 in 2007 to 2,723 in 2012—of human rights violations by Mexican soldiers and federal police, including torture, rape, extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, as well as other abuses.”
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by Emma Buckhout, LAWG Intern
on April 22, 2013
On Monday, March 18, 2013 the Latin America Working Group Education Fund together with the Washington Office on Latin America, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, the US Office on Colombia, and the Guatemala Human Rights Commission hosted a panel event entitled “Until We Find Them: The Disappeared in Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru” to discuss the situation of forced disappearances in each country.
Wilson de los Reyes Aragón has been the Director of Impunity Watch in Guatemala since 2007. He is a Colombian lawyer, as well as a university lecturer and consultant on human rights advocacy and litigation. He spoke about the situation of forced disappearances in Guatemala, which are officially acknowledged to have occurred during the conflict era prior to the 1996 peace accords, but which continue today, now largely unacknowledged by the necessary authorities.The following is his statement, edited only for readability purposes.
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by Omar Martinez
on April 18, 2013
We have made an impact.
But we still need your help in driving our message home so that our government supports the peace process in Colombia, with truth and justice. You did a great job in helping get Congress on board to support the peace process as 62 representatives have signed the congressional Dear Colleague letter. Now we need your help so that President Obama hears our call for peace.
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by Winifred Tate, Guest
on April 18, 2013
“Colombia is a model for the region,” then-Senator John Kerry told the public during his January 2013 confirmation hearing for Secretary of State. Thanks to an aggressive counterinsurgency program, aided by billions of dollars in U.S. funding, Kerry and others in Washington argue that Colombia has been transformed. Rather than a model, however, the Women’s Alliance of Putumayo and others prove that the region is a cautionary tale, documenting those changes the thousands of human rights abuses that occurred here.
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by Emma Buckhout, LAWG Intern
on April 16, 2013
Since 2006, the deterioration of Mexico’s security situation due to the Mexican government’s “war on organized crime” has made international headlines. The violence has affected tens of thousands of citizens and exacerbated long-standing issues of corruption and institutional weakness. During the administration of former President Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, CNDH) saw a five-fold increase in complaints of human rights violations by Mexican soldiers and federal police, including torture, rape, extrajudicial execution, arbitrary detention, and enforced disappearance. At the same time, human rights defenders have found it increasingly difficult to carry out their work due to threats to their safety. Recently elected president Enrique Peña Nieto has firmly expressed his commitment to making sure that “rights established on paper become reality,” but his government has yet to make concrete changes that would reflect this commitment.
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