Author Topic: NPR: Opinion: Guatemala Must Not Grant Amnesty To War Criminals  (Read 398 times)

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NPR: Opinion: Guatemala Must Not Grant Amnesty To War Criminals
« on: February 12, 2019, 02:41:42 am »
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Opinion: Guatemala Must Not Grant Amnesty To War Criminals
Jo-Marie Burt

Guatemala's ongoing political crisis is having a devastating impact on its people, fueling unrest in the streets and increasingly driving asylum-seekers to migrate to the U.S.-Mexico border. Now, with the country's Congress poised to pass a bill that would free war criminals, there's no clearer sign that rule of law in Guatemala is undergoing a slow, ugly collapse that could spur even more migration to the United States.

The proposed legislation, which Guatemala's Congress is expected to debate imminently, would free more than 30 military officials convicted of crimes against humanity and more than a dozen others awaiting trial on such charges. It would also prohibit all future investigations into other cases of grave human rights crimes committed during the country's brutal 36-year civil war that ended in 1996.

Should this amnesty bill pass, not only would it undo decades of work to provide justice to victims of wartime atrocities, it would represent an unequivocal return to the reign of impunity long sought by the powerful, military-backed networks of corruption that the United States has invested significant resources into dismantling.

Read more at: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/11/693492939/opinion-guatemala-must-not-grant-amnesty-to-war-criminals