Lawsuit with 800 plaintiffs seeks damages for individuals, spouses and children of people deliberately infected with STDs through US government programme.
In anticipation of the new genocide trial of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt, the North American Congress on Latin America is running free episodes from the web series Dictator in the Dock directed by Pamela Yates. Yates recalls Rios Montt’s first conviction in 2013 upon which the film is based. On Monday, Guatemalan Judge Janeth Valdez was forced to recuse herself from the second trial. All proceedings are suspended until a new tribunal is formed.
Canadian mining companies have long evaded responsibility for abuses carried out by their subsidiaries in the developing world. That could be about to change.
The U.S. owes more than empty apologies in Central America.
Despite the May 20 ruling by Guatemala’s Constitutional Court, which overturned the original verdict on procedural grounds, the May 10 conviction of that country’s former head of state, General Efrain Rios Montt, for the genocide of Guatemala’s Mayan people, could be a defining event in modern history.
On Monday, Guatemala's Constitutional Court overturned the conviction of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, an army general who ruled as de facto president from 1982 to 1983.
The soiled hands of this incident are many. They did not start or stop with Rios Montt.
Efrain Rios Montt, who ruthlessly ruled Guatemala in the early 1980s, is currently standing trial for genocide. The burden of justice and nation healing falls on the Guatemalan people: it is their dictator who stands trial and their people who suffered under him. But Americans (and Guatemalans) ought to remember that Rios Montt had big friends in Washington. President Bill Clinton apologized in 1999, saying that the U.S. support for the death squads "was wrong."
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