Genocide Trial Coverage Receives 2014 Press Association Gold

Wonderful news – my coverage of the 2013 Rios Montt genocide trial has received the top award in International News Writing from the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada, a 103-year old organization of more than 250 member newspapers and magazines.

                      

BEST NEWS WRITING International Event 

FIRST PLACE

 “Coverage of Guatemala genocide trial” 

by Mary Jo McConahay 

National Catholic Reporter

If you missed them, here are the articles.

Genocide on trial in Guatemala, setting model for region

http://ncronline.org/news/global/genocide-trial-guatemala-setting-model-region

Guatemala genocide survivors take stand at Rios Montt trial

http://ncronline.org/news/global/survivors-take-stand-r-os-montt-trial

Guatemala genocide trial back on track after suspension

http://ncronline.org/news/global/guatemala-genocide-trial-back-track-after-suspension

Rios Montt found guilty of Guatemalan genocide

http://ncronline.org/news/global/r-os-montt-found-guilty-guatemalan-genocide

After wrenching accounts and guilty decision, verdict annulled

http://ncronline.org/news/global/trial-guatemalan-dictator-r-os-montt-annulled-technicality

 For additional blogposts about the trial, including links to my related articles written for the Los Angeles Times, New America Media and California Lawyer, see this GlobeWatch blog, Feb-Aug 2013

Genocide Trial Most Tumultuous Week Yet

Survivors

Daughter supports mother, a widow whose husband was killed  in  the violence.

Witnesses for the defense of Gen. Efraín Rios Montt testified that life improved for indigenous Maya when he came into office in March, 1982, in the mountainous Ixil region.

Left, Ricardo Mendez Ruiz, president of the Foundation Against Terrorism, which published a 20-page newspaper insert on Sunday calling the genocide charge a "farce" and blamed a "Marxist" Catholic Church for sowing the seeds of violence with "revolutionary" theology.  Second from left, Zulema Paz de Rodriguez, wife of Rios co-defendant, former military intelligence chief Mauricio Rodriguez.  Third from left,  Zury Rios Sosa, former Guatemalan congress member and the strongman's daughter who married former Congressman Jerry Weller (R-IL) in 2004.  Right, unidentified companion of Zury Rios.

Spectators listened with stony faces in the packed courtroom. 

 Some 200,000, mostly unarmed indigenous, died during the armed internal conflict according to an estimate by a U.N.-sponsored truth commission. In a theatrical departure, defense attorneys abandoned the courtroom in protest at proceedings on the morning of April 18.

Alone at defense table, Gen. José Efraín Ríos Montt

Security was unable or unwilling to bring them back despite orders from the bench, or perhaps armed guards were unable to hear the order  in the ensuing hubbub.

Spectators and press in a crush to enter a separate, smaller courtroom where another judge "annulled" the trial going on in the Supreme Court Building

That afternoon a judge from another court ordered the trial halted. On the morning of April 19, however, the trial's presiding judge reiterated the tribunal's "independence," declared the previous day's order illegal and said the trial would continue.  Before exiting the court the three judges stood and acknowledged elated applause from the courtroom. "The tribunal appreciates your confidence in the justice system," said tribunal president, Jasmįn Barrios.

Survivors and others left the Supreme Court building for a demonstration and mile-long march to the Constitutional Court, where prosecutors filed a  formal request for review of the judge who ordered the trial annulled.

Here are two stories I've published in the last week about the genocide trial.

 National Catholic Reporter
New America Media

Sexual Violence at Genocide Trial

Judge Jasmín Barrios said the sexual violence session of the Rios Montt genocide trial today must be public, but that it was permissible for witnesses to cover their faces. All so far have done so, except for the one male witness, Pedro Cobo, who had gone down to the riverbank the day soldiers killed villagers to look for his parents, brothers and sisters. "My mother was nude," he said. "The river was full of blood."

Seated left, former military intelligence chief, Mauricio Sanchez Rodriguez.  Seated right former president Efrain Rios Montt.  Both defendants in genocide case.

Seated at table second from right, defendant Gen. Efrain Rios Montt

Interpreter and witness

Spectators.  Front row.

Justice for Genocide?

200,000 Killed.   My take on the Rios Montt genocide trial, published in today, Sunday's, Los Angeles Times.  

CLICK HERE TO READ THE STORY

I'm adding for the blog a few photos I took one of the days.  An important trial. 

A brave judge, above, Miguel Angel Galvez

Rios and one of his defense attorneys 

Expanding Genocide’s Definition at LASA

Only seeing Rio from the bus so far: Latin American Studies Association meetings, Rio de Janiero, Brazil......

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Parsing Political Violence

There is more reason every day to study the paroxysms of violence that shook Chile, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador and other Latin American countries in the late 20th century. Knowing in depth what happened can mean they may never happen again. But examination also determines whether they fall into the category of genocide, what journalist and academic Samantha Power calls, “The Problem from Hell.”

The problem defining genocide comes first. Panelists discussing Institutional Memory -- that of political parties, the military, etc -- ended up grappling with what genocide is, and which killing events might fall into it, for much of their lively session. In particular: should the definition of victims be expanded to include members of a political affiliation?

It’s well known that genocide includes targeted killing of individuals because they belong to a particular group -- religious, racial, ethnic, national. What is less well known, as Pablo Policzer of the University of Calgary, pointed out, is that the first several drafts of the 1946 U.N. Genocide Convention included the political category, making it a crime of genocide to kill someone for his affiliation with a particular political group. Only at the last moment, because the Soviet Union and Iran threatened not to sign the convention if that group were left in, was it removed.

Some panelists said only the most numerically massive and egregious killings ought to be included in genocide's definition, like the WWII Holocaust, Cambodia, or the slaughter of Armenians; others stood for the original, wider definition including political groups, which might bring in Chile, for instance.

Against the wider definition is the argument that political affiliation is a choice one makes, less basic to identity than one’s ethnicity or religion. The counterargument is that a person’s choice of political affiliation is far more fundamental to who one is than even the other protected categories: Ethnic identities may be constructed; religious affiliation may be changed. By political affiliation we are not talking here about U.S. citizens choosing between the parties of Democrats and Republicans, who have more in common than they do separating them; instead we are talking about political world views, dictated by a person's birth or experience to become as intrinsically part of his being as his blood type.

Any of the already recognized categories of victims of genocide include identities that are not necessarily objective, but can be created or defined by the perpetrators of the genocide themselves. That is true too of political grouping -- consider the Guatemalan military policy of eliminating entire indigenous villages because of its belief the Maya were natural “allies” of insurgents. It was the military’s own definition of who the enemy was, its assumption of alliance with a political group, without regard to the stand of individuals.

Beyond scholars, lawyers and judges are wrestling with definitions of crimes against humanity and genocide to an increasing degree each year. Defining genocide is not an exercise like determining the number of angels that fit on the head of a pin. It has real world consequences for justice: crime juridically defined as genocide becomes a crime against humanity, which makes perpetrators liable under international law.

At least one panelist was convinced by colleagues’ arguments at LASA, he said, so that by the session’s end he said he believed the political affiliation category ought to be included when considering the crime of genocide.