A leading Guatemalan human rights activist has urged Ireland to support efforts to prosecute one of his country's former dictators, Gen Jose Efrain Rios Montt, for the crime of genocide.
Speaking in Dublin for Latin America Week, which ends today, Mr Frank La Rue said Gen Rios Montt was "to Guatemalans what Pinochet is to Chileans".
The former army chief of staff, who came to power in a military coup in March 1982, is accused of orchestrating a campaign of ethnic cleansing under which tens of thousands of indigenous people were murdered and more than one million displaced.
Gen Rios Montt is currently president of the Guatemalan parliament and an "active politician with much influence within the ruling party and congress", said Mr La Rue.
As a result, "international pressure will make a huge difference. We need as much outside support as possible, first, to offer some protection to the communities who are filing the case and, second, to ensure the case is followed up properly."
Mr La Rue, who is director of the Centre for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH) in Guatemala City, which is spearheading the action, pleaded for diplomatic and financial support from the Government. "Ireland has a good track record of supporting human rights initiatives in Guatemala and we would hope that would continue."
He said he was hoping to arrange for an Oireachtas delegation to visit Guatemala shortly.
Proceedings in the case will be initiated in the Guatemalan courts next May with 12 test cases of communities who suffered massacres under the former general's reign. More than 1,200 people were killed in these communities alone between March and December 1982 in a military clampdown on leftwing guerrilla activity.
Mr La Rue, who was forced to live in exile between 1981 and 1993 because of his pro-democracy work, said the human rights situation had improved since the signing of the Guatemalan peace accords in December 1996, although it was "a mixed bag".
He said: "We don't have the disappearances and massacres or systematic tortures but we do have police harassment." Since January 2000, when the current government took power, he said, there were 96 break-ins and other acts of vandalism at the offices of human rights activists. "There has been no investigation by the police or action of any sort."
In an unprecedented move earlier this month, a number of foreign embassies in Guatemala City took out an advertisement in the press complaining about the attacks.
Latin America Week, which organises events in several parts of Ireland, closes today with conferences in Dublin and Cork and a programme of short films from Latin America at DIT College, Aungier Street, Dublin. Admission is free. Information: 01 676 0435.
