Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA

COMMEMORATION OF BISHOP’S ASSASSINATION CALLS ATTENTION TO IMPUNITY IN GUATEMALA

April 26, 2008 - Hundreds of members from the D.C. metropolitan area Latino community, human rights organizations, and religious institutions gathered for a memorial service to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Guatemalan Bishop Juan Gerardi. The service honored the life and work of Bishop Gerardi and called attention to the insidious violence and prevailing impunity that the Guatemalan people continue to suffer.

Monsignor Gerardi was the driving force behind the Catholic Church’s project for the Recovery of Historical Memory (REMHI), which documented human rights violations committed during Guatemala’s 36-year armed conflict. Gathered from thousands of personal testimonies from 1995-1998, the Report accounted for more than 200,000 people killed or disappeared during the war, and held the Guatemalan military and allied paramilitary forces responsible for more than 90% of the human rights violations. Gerardi presented REMHI’s final report to the public on April 24, 1998. He was brutally assassinated two days later in his home.

Ten years after Gerardi’s death, three members of the Guatemalan military were convicted for his murder, but those responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity cited in the REMHI report have yet to be held accountable. “The Guatemalan Attorney General and Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) have refused to carry forward the criminal petitions filed by victims of mass atrocities during the war and bring those responsible to justice,” said Marty Jordan, co-director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA (GHRC), the group responsible for organizing the service.

“The lack of justice in the overwhelming majority of past crimes has led to a lawless and volatile Guatemala where nearly 6,000 people are murdered each year and 98% of the present-day crimes are never brought to trial and remain in impunity,” said Mario Domingo, the keynote speaker during the memorial service and one of the lead attorneys on the Gerardi case.

“Now, more than ever, international attention and pressure is necessary to ensure that those responsible for torture, forced disappearances, massacres, and assassinations are held accountable. As we remember Bishop Gerardi and all those who died during the armed conflict of the past, it is our obligation to demand that those who were responsible for these heinous crimes are brought to justice in the present,” added Marty Jordan of GHRC.

For more than a quarter century, GHRC has raised awareness about human rights violations in Guatemala and provided concerned U.S. citizens avenues to apply international pressure on the Guatemalan government. For further information, please contact Marty Jordan at 202.529.6599.

 

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