By Robyn Marshall
The URNG, the united Guatemalan revolutionary organisation, issued a call on April 19 for international solidarity organisations to protest vigorously against the failure of the Guatemalan government to implement peace agreements.
In the three weeks since the Guatemalan government and the URNG signed the first point of the peace accords in Mexico, the government not taken even the simplest steps to honour these accords.
There was agreement on human rights, on a timetable and agenda for the following months and on the initial demobilisation of both armed forces, starting in December 1994. Discussion on the establishment of a truth commission was deferred for two months.
The government also committed itself to strengthen the national human rights organisations, to respect the autonomy of the judiciary and not to impede the legal pursuit of those responsible for violations of human rights. It promised to promote modifications to the penal code to cover crimes against individuals such as disappearances and extrajudicial executions and recognised its obligation to fight against the existence of illegal security guards and clandestine armed bodies.
The government also pledged to implement a new law on military service that would protect people working in the field of human rights. It promised to develop programs to indemnify victims of human rights violations. Both parties recognised the necessity of eradicating the suffering of the civil population and respecting the rights of wounded or captured combatants.
The agreement said that both parties would ask the secretary general of the United Nations to organise a verification of human rights and the fulfilment of the agreement.
However, the government has not even disseminated information about the agreement as it had promised. Instead, it has initiated a campaign of disinformation and has tried to promote the image of the disintegration of the URNG as a fighting force.
Even more seriously, the government has launched a wave of assaults against progressive individuals and has used threats and accusations against popular and religious organisations which had played a role in the Assembly of Civil Society, which was involved in the setting up the negotiations. It is thought a plan of destabilisation exists whose objective is to block the negotiation process.
Just two days after the signing of the human rights agreement, the president of the Supreme Court, Epaminondas Gonzalez, was assassinated on April 2. It is widely believed that an extreme right-wing section of the army was responsible for the murder, to show its disagreement with the negotiations.
Many officers do not want peace with the URNG because war with the guerilla forces provides a cover for their corrupt deals in armaments and other illegal operations, such as car stealing and selling the organs of street children to wealthy North Americans and Europeans.
In fact, the human rights situation has deteriorated since the agreement was signed. "In these critical moments of danger, we ask that the Guatemalan government be pressured by the international community to observe and fulfil the Global Accord of Human Rights that it signed and that it cease its campaign of disinformation and manipulation", said a URNG spokesperson.