EDITORIAL Demanding disclosure on a bloody
past
In March, a United Nations-sponsored
truth report documenting the horrible details of Guatemalas 36-year civil
war was released to the world.
Guatemala: Memory of Silence, described the tactics of
the Guatemalan government as genocide and held the United States
responsible for supporting a string of bloody dictators, for training their
militaries in vicious counterinsurgency tactics that resulted in widespread
torture and death and for using the CIA to aid the cause of the dictators.
For about a week, the report caused a mild stir but it soon sank
to the background, silent and hidden, like the long and grisly U.S.-aided siege
that ended with 200,000 Guatemalans dead or missing.
The history will remain obscure, the butchers and assassins
largely untouched, unless the demand grows for disclosure. About a month after
the report was issued, U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., introduced for the
second time the Human Rights Information Act, a bill that would declassify the
extensive records of the U.S. State Department, CIA and Department of Defense
on activities in Guatemala, Honduras and other countries.
The bill, which currently has more than 60 co-sponsors, has been
referred again to a subcommittee. Information about the act can be found at
www.amnestyusa.org/truthnow/
It is easy to understand the governments continued
reluctance to release the documents. The United States first created the
circumstances for revolution in Guatemala with a CIA-engineered coup in 1954
and then was deeply involved through the bloodiest stages of the civil war in
the 1980s. During that latter period, tens of thousands of innocent Guatemalans
were tortured and slaughtered by regimes that received U.S. support.
It is difficult to imagine what national security concerns would
be served by continuing to refuse to open the record to the American public.
Those from Guatemala and the United States who have suffered there certainly
deserve to know. Just as compelling, however, is the argument that the
Guatemalan and U.S. citizenry at large can make for simply knowing how their
governments came to visit such horrible abuses against so many innocent
people.
The Human Rights Information Act would provide a much clearer and
necessary look at that history, and it would help protect against such gross
human rights violations in the future.
National Catholic Reporter, September 10,
1999
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