The right to murder
Cutting Edge: Impunidad
SBS Television
Tuesday, August 10, 8.30 p.m. (8 in Adelaide)
Reviewed by Neville Spencer
This documentary from Australian film maker Helen Gaynor examines a key issue behind the horrific record of human rights in Guatemala. Impunity — the military's right to imprison, torture or kill anyone without fear of punishment — did not disappear with military rule, but still dominates the people of Guatemala after seven years of civilian governments.
The film spends little time examining Guatemala's bloody history or the political context of its human rights problems. Its focus, the continuation of impunity under civilian rule, is the main stumbling block in the effort to end the country's 30-year civil war, as it has been in El Salvador, Peru and Colombia also.
"The fact that there is an elected government, a civilian government, a civilian president, doesn't exactly mean that the power is all in the hands of the civilians, because the army is the axis of power in Guatemala. And when I say the axis of power, it's not only the political power but also the economic power. The generals for example are the biggest landowners in our country now", says one interviewee.
In all the murders and massacres studied by the film, it is only under intense popular pressure that government institutions make even a pretence at trying to bring those responsible to justice, even when their identities are well known. In the one case where a thorough investigation is made, the police officer who carried out the investigation is assassinated.
Helen Gaynor says, "Guatemala rarely makes the news. Maybe it's because opponents of the system rarely make it out alive."
This probably also explains why the film looks mostly at the Santiago de Atitlan massacre and the Myrna Mack case, incidents which have received a small degree of international attention. These cases have also
received a commensurately small degree of justice. If the thousands of incidents which have made little or no impact in the media were examined, the picture would be blacker still.