AJR reject with total indignation the law initiative 6099

THE ASSOCIATION FOR JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION -AJR- TO THE PUBLIC OPINION COMMUNICATES:

The victims and survivors of the Internal Armed Conflict (IAC)  organized in the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) reject with total indignation the law initiative 6099, because it favors the military personnel responsible for committing grave violations of human rights and crimes against humanity during the IAC.

These facts are added to the actions of Alejandro Giammatteit’s government by dismantling the institutionality of Peace, which attempt to erase the Historical Truth: in Guatemala there was Genocide, violence and sexual slavery, forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, massacres, scorched earth policy, forced displacements and other abuses, as State policy.

Congress intends to wash its hands by consulting the  current Constitutional Court (CC), co-opted by the corrupt powers, “to find out if the initiative violates the Constitution.” We consider this a farce, under the current political conditions.

We remind the deputies of the Congress of the Republic that the CC considered it “unfeasible to grant amnesty in relation to crimes that constitute serious violations of human rights or crimes against humanity,” according to press release 05-2021, published on February 9, 2021, in relation to the injunction granted to Paulina Ixpatá Osorio, Pedrina López De León, Sergio Fernando Vi Escobar, Helen Beatriz Mack Chang and Héctor Samayoa Sosa, and therefore left without effect “the procedure of formation, sanction and promulgation of the modifications of the National Reconciliation Law.”

In addition, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), in the provisional measures and supervision of sentence completion in the case of Members of the Chichupac Village and neighboring communities of the Municipality of Rabinal, the Molina Theissen case and12 other Guatemalan Cases Vs. Guatemala, issued on March 12, 2019, resolved that the State: “in consideration of the gravity of the facts, it may not apply amnesty laws or statutes of limitation, nor use pretended exclusions of responsibility, which in reality are a pretext to impede the investigation.”, (I. Provisional Measures, para. 1, letter a.).

It is unquestionable that the attempts of Congress to seek impunity for those responsible for Genocide and other crimes against humanity are contrary to the international obligations that the State of Guatemala has assumed. Therefore, the deputies must abide by the resolution of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of 2019 and the CC’s resolution of 2021, and stop the approval of initiative 6099.

GENOCIDE NEVER AGAIN!

September 29, 2023