Atrocities in C.America, US Again on Center Stage/Guardian Guardian of London, June 20, 2001 source - www.commondreams.org via ACTIV-L As Perpetrators of C.American Atrocities are Finally Convicted, the US is Again Center Stage by Duncan Campbell Twenty years ago, Central America stood at the heart of the cold war. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras. The names of those small, impoverished countries still conjure up in the minds of many in the west the images of civil war, of films such as Salvador and Under Fire, of death squads and mass graves and of the Iran-Contra affair. Recent events show how much has changed in the region since then and also how little. Earlier this month, the former head of military intelligence in Guatemala, two other soldiers and a priest were convicted of the murder in 1998 of the Roman Catholic bishop Juan Jose Gerardi. He was killed shortly after he had presented the church's report on the atrocities committed during the country's civil war, Never Again. It is worth remembering that 200,000 people died during that war, more than in the conflicts in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile and Argentina combined. The 330-page report, produced by the Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala, concluded that 90% of the atrocities during the civil war had been committed by government forces and their allied paramilitary bands. Two days later, the Bishop was battered to death in his home. The trial, which concluded this month, was a test of Guatemala's commitment to the judicial process. Two days before it started, grenades were thrown at the home of one of the judges hearing the case. The fact that Colonel Disrael Lima, the former head of military intelligence, his son Captain Byron Lima and Sergeant Jose Obdulio Villanueva were all convicted and jailed for 30 years is a sign of how much has changed in two decades. Just as the verdicts were about to be announced there came another historic event for the country. Charges were laid in a lawsuit against the former military dictator Ephrain Rios Montt, accused of acts of genocide, the result of a three-year investigation by the Centre of Legal Action on Human Rights (CALDH) into 1,200 deaths committed by the military during the civil war period when he was in charge. Last week, a judge ruled that the investigation should proceed and the possible immunity of Rios Montt, the current parliamentary president, or speaker, should be resolved later. But elsewhere there are different echoes of the past. It is more than 10 years since the Sandinistas were voted out of office in Nicaragua and it is something of a surprise to some to find that their leader, Daniel Ortega, is not only still standing for public office but running seven percentage points ahead of his nearest rival as this November's presidential elections approach. Here again it is important to remember the past. Whatever the subsequent failings in government of the Sandinistas, it was their heroic achievement to rid the country of the dictator Anastasio Somoza. They then had to fight a war waged against them by the contras (the counter-revolutionaries) with the illicit support of the US government. The Irangate affair, in which arms were sold to Iran in exchange for the illegal funding of the contras, was only the most notable event in a series of shabby actions initiated or aided by the CIA. So it was interesting to see that the US state department had an envoy in Managua last month making it clear in a meeting with the local American chamber of commerce that if the Sandinistas were elected the US would not be pleased. The implied threat is that, unless the opposition combine to defeat the Sandinistas, the country will suffer severe economic consequences. Meanwhile President Bush has nominated John Negroponte to be his UN ambassador. Negroponte was the US ambassador in Honduras, Nicaragua's northern neighbour, from 1981-85, at the height of the contra war when Honduras played a key role as a contra base. Negroponte has been accused of failing to report atrocities committed by the Honduras armed forces against leftists during his time there, in order that Honduras would stay amenable to giving a safe haven to the contras. Negroponte has still to be confirmed by the Senate foreign relations committee, which has had long delays in accessing documents from the state department and the CIA about Negroponte's knowledge or otherwise of what was happening. Much of the information in one relevant CIA report has been blacked out, leaving the questions still unanswered. Negroponte, who has the public support of Henry Kissinger, with whom he worked at the Paris peace talks at the end of the Vietnam war, may yet be confirmed but his appointment would send an odd message to the world and may serve to inspire more excavation of the US's past in Central America. "Peace is possible - a peace that is born from the truth that comes from each one of us and from all of us," said Bishop Gerardi at the presentation of his report two days before he was killed. "It is a painful truth, full of memories of the country's deep and bloody wounds ... It is a truth that challenges each one of us to recognise our individual and collective responsibility and to commit ourselves to action so that those abominable acts never happen again." It would be a fitting epitaph for the bishop if the re-emergence of Central America's civil war history on to the world stage were to lead to just such a recognition on all sides. Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ================================================================= 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-06.22.01-18:13:24-2274