The June 26, 2008, in Nebaj, Quiché Team Community Studies and Psychosocial Action (ECAP) organized a workshop with the intention of celebrating the International Day Against Torture. CAIG-ACOGUATE participated as an international observer.
A football stadium become the field of detention and torture
the morning of the workshop was aimed at associations and attended the following: Where are the Association for Children? (ADEN), Solidarity International (SI), Center for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH), Human Rights Ombudsman (PDH), and as organizers of the event, Team Community Studies and Psychosocial Action (ECAP). Also present witnesses and victims of domestic war ACOGUATE attached. In the afternoon the workshop was repeated, this time for students.
The workshop began with the vision of the Chilean film "National Stadium", directed by Carmen Luz Parot and filmed in 2001. A historical document that shows how in 1973 the fascist military regime of Augusto Pinochet illegally stops and holds thousands of people in a soccer stadium in Santiago de Chile. There were more than 12,000 people tortured.
After seeing the documentary, the participants shared with others what he had suggested the film. Ixil women recalled the suffering endured during the war. And indigenous authorities said today " lies and manipulation of politicians and the high cost of living becomes a form of torture for the poor continue to suffer.
Team Community Studies and Psychosocial Action
ECAP psychosocial processes of action developed with victims of political violence, mostly Mayan, aimed at his statement as subjects of their own history, to the recovery of collective memory the fight against impunity, the search for justice and social reconstruction of the community. "(1)
Torture, unjust punishment
The Parish Room where Nebaj developed the workshop were presented posters with pictures, press clippings and testimonials on torture, which is defined as: "Any act which is intentionally inflicted on a person severe pain and suffering, whether physical or mental, purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he has committed, or intimidating. This suffering must be inflicted by a public official or other person assigned to this or have your consent. "(2)
What is the intention of torture?
The Internal Armed Conflict, "in addition to seeking information and confession, torture was made to destroy the identity of the victims, seeking their removal or conversion into collaborators of repression against people of their own communities. Also to attack the collective identity, values \u200b\u200band beliefs. And as a tool to change the ideas of individuals and communities. "(3)
The Mayan people, persecuted and massacred
During the period 2007-2009, CPT, ICCPG (Institute for Comparative Studies in Criminal Sciences Guatemala), Master in Social Psychology and Political Violence (USAC) and European Union are making the project "Torture: Prevention and Rehabilitation in the Multicultural Context Guatemala, "in order to" rehabilitate 540 people from 15 Mayan communities victims of torture during internal armed conflict with a multicultural approach with special emphasis on women. "
" The Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) registered a total of 11,598 victims of torture, 54% of the victims survived, most of these belong to the Mayan people harshly persecuted and massacred, coinciding with the departments with the highest rates of poverty and underdevelopment at the national level. "(4)
Who committed torture?
"According to testimonies collected by the CEH, "88% of cases of torture were executed by the Army. The other State security forces committed acts against civilians with the intention of trying to prevent the organization of peasant, labor and social policy. And for fear that indigenous communities could join the guerrillas. "
" You wanted to change the traditional way of thinking through control mechanisms as the PAC (PACs), the Model Villages (population resettlement displaced civilian, controlled by the Army) and the Development Poles. In the case of the Army and the PAC, torture applied as a form of disposal of the population in many communities. "
" These data are not accurate because many victims will not survive to tell his testimony. However, exhumations have been conducted in many regions and this has permitted those who were tortured and killed at the time, now rest in a dignified and not continue in the mountains, well, forgotten in the historical memory. "(5 )
"Torture as a part of the system"
Two coordinators of the workshop, raised the question in conclusion: "There is still torture in Guatemala?" The answer is given by one of the clippings set out in the workshop: "Although torture is a crime in Guatemala since 1995 and that the abuses committed by state security forces are common, no one has been convicted in the country by those facts. "(6)
" Rates of violence in Guatemala has increased and a large number of these victims show signs of torture. Human rights organizations say these crimes and the alarming increase of women's murders and lynchings occurring in the context of a process of social cleansing that selected vulnerable groups. This feeds a culture of violence that deprives the population and prevents the consolidation peace, as well as impunity and justify their acceptance of sectors and the population. "(7)
The seed of hope
" Why strives death / killing, vainly, to Life / if humble seed / stone breaks the strongest? "(8)
. . . . . . . . . . Written by ACOGUATE
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(1), (5), (7) http://www.ecapguatemala.org
(2) Article 1.1 of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Deprobables.
(3), (4) Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH, 1999): Guatemala: Memoria del Silencio.
(6) Free Press, June 23, 2008.
(8) Song of the Guatemalan Luis de Lion.
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