Amnesty worker attacked in Guatemala kidnap attempt

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

source - JosePertierra@aol.com

Amnesty worker attacked in Guatemala kidnap try

GUATEMALA CITY, June 14 (Reuters) - An American worker for human rights
group Amnesty International was attacked by kidnappers in her Guatemala City
hotel room and then left gagged and drugged in a fire escape, the group said
on Thursday.

U.S.-born Barbara Bocek, who was among Amnesty staff visiting the Central
American nation to assess its human rights situation, was knocked
unconscious in the doorway of her room in the capital's luxury Westin Camino
Real hotel on Monday.

A spokesman from Amnesty's Washington office said she was not hurt and
returned to the United States on Tuesday. The spokesman said the attack was
part of a kidnap attempt but it was unclear why her kidnappers left Bocek at
the hotel.

Hotel management found Bocek in the fire escape after Amnesty colleagues, on
noting her absence, found her hotel room empty and the door open.

The Amnesty mission coincided with a Guatemalan court's landmark conviction
of three military men and a priest in the 1998 bludgeoning to death of human
rights advocate Bishop Juan Gerardi.

It also comes at a time when death threats against human rights activists in
Guatemala have been on the rise in the 18-month-old administration of
President Alfonso Portillo.

"We will insist on the attack being investigated in a full, impartial and
independent manner and on those responsible being brought to justice," the
Amnesty spokesman said.

Bocek worked intensively with Maya Indians in Guatemala's rural highlands
during a bloody 36-year civil war in which the majority ethnic group bore
the brunt of state-sponsored violence, including widespread massacres.

The conflict ended in 1996 with peace accords.

Amnesty's London-based Guatemala specialist, Tracy Ulltveit-Moe, who
accompanied Bocek on the mission, told Reuters on Monday that death threats
against human rights activists battling for justice in the country had
increased in the past 18 months.

She said intimidation had reached levels not seen since the darkest days of
urban violence during the late 1970s.

21:56 06-14-01

 
=================================================================
  NY Transfer News Collective   *   A Service of Blythe Systems 
           Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us          
              339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012             
  http://www.blythe.org                  e-mail: nyt@blythe.org 
=================================================================
 
nytcamer-06.14.01-22:58:55-23571