Los guatemaltecos tienen miedo de ser criminalizados por la fiscalía, afirma relatora de la CIDH – Chicago Tribune
By SONIA PEREZ D.
CIUDAD DE GUATEMALA (AP) — The Guatemalan population has been criminalized by taxation, assured Governor Andrea Pochak, Guatemala’s rapporteur for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, based in Washington, before releasing information on the human rights situation in the Central American nation.
“There are challenges and historical facts, but there are also situations where it is urgent to resolve because democracy in Guatemala is in danger,” Pochak told The Associated Press, speaking of the co-optation of institutions and the criminalization of human rights defenders, a situation that “prioritizes information,” punctually.
Pochak explained that, for several years, without being able to make an official visit to Guatemala, the miedo and the panic between the population that was criminalized is something that had an impact on the commission.
“We are accompanied in Latin America by people who have tensions with the police or expellees, these countries which suffer dictations or armed conflicts, but that people have panic tensions in taxation because they can be criminals for any reason or for the defender of their rights, that’s it. “unpublished and demonstrated that we do not confide in justice,” he added.
Make sure that criminalization is “the arbitrary use of criminal law, and who can exercise this right to the state, and whether the use of arbitrary form is criminalization.”
It has been reported that there are certain patterns that illustrate the arbitrary use of criminal law in Guatemala, such as using ambiguous criminal figures to persecute people, a preventive prison of arbitrary form, the reservation of judicial procedures or presenting denunciations with determined judgments on these causes.
The special relationship on the independence of magistrates and lawyers of the United Nations, Margaret Satterthwaite, was questioned in 2024 by the Guatemalan Public Prosecutor’s Office to carry out a policy of criminalization against judicial operators, social leaders and periodicals which denounced acts of corruption.
The Public Ministry has been led since 2018 by María Consuelo Porras, who has been sanctioned by 42 countries, including the United States and the European Union. The sanctions prohibit many of its taxes from entering these countries, making them guilty of supporting democracy in Guatemala and preventing the fight against corruption.
The commission has not made an official visit to the country for a year.
Pochak explains that it is not possible to guarantee human rights without the rule of law and that “he is in danger in Guatemala”.
Among the 100 members of the judiciary, including judges, lawyers and tax officers, as well as human rights defenders and prosecutors, who have been exiled since 2022, have denounced the persecution for their work fighting corruption and crimes against humanity.
“When a person abandons the country because he pursues an arbitrary way of violating his life plan, he leaves his home, his country, originating in what causes strong changes in his animal, moral situation, but not only for people, but it also has an impact on society, so it has a silent impact on society,” Pochak said.
