Stumbled on some somber stuff about Guatemala.
In 2005 archives were found with 80 million documents relating to the 200,000 people that disappeared/were murdered during the Fascist
regime that lasted decades before that. The population's only 14 Mill. So about 1 out of 70 people were disappeared. Schoolteachers and so forth.
See below:
http://www.hrdag.org/about/guatemala-pol...ject.shtml
Something's a little off about the place. A TWO percent clearance rate for homicide?(see far below) I think in the USA it's like 50% or more. (See below link.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2004_U...arance.jpg
I've worked with the criminal justice system, and what a 2% clearance rate tells me is that there is no desire to solve the cases-- or the cops are part of it themselves.
Which means for us, DON'T get into trouble in Guatemala.
From the above piece:
"The historical information in the archive could help investigators analyze the evolution of Guatemala's police institutions and determine how civil authorities drift into extra-judicial acts of violence. Data in the archive could also help explain political patterns that continue to support a culture of impunity and may someday help heal ongoing distrust of police authorities.
Guatemala continues to suffer from a high rate of homicide, despite its relatively small population that now totals about 14 million. In 2006, the Guatemalan government established a national commission on "femicide" after coming under pressure from the U.S. Congress and human rights groups to address a series of especially horrific murders of women. According to the PDH, 2,318 women were murdered in this small country from 2002-2006, a figure that could be confirmed or challenged by further rigorous data analysis. According to press reports, only 2% of the more than 5,000 murders in Guatemala each year are solved."
In 2005 archives were found with 80 million documents relating to the 200,000 people that disappeared/were murdered during the Fascist
regime that lasted decades before that. The population's only 14 Mill. So about 1 out of 70 people were disappeared. Schoolteachers and so forth.
See below:
http://www.hrdag.org/about/guatemala-pol...ject.shtml
Something's a little off about the place. A TWO percent clearance rate for homicide?(see far below) I think in the USA it's like 50% or more. (See below link.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2004_U...arance.jpg
I've worked with the criminal justice system, and what a 2% clearance rate tells me is that there is no desire to solve the cases-- or the cops are part of it themselves.
Which means for us, DON'T get into trouble in Guatemala.
From the above piece:
"The historical information in the archive could help investigators analyze the evolution of Guatemala's police institutions and determine how civil authorities drift into extra-judicial acts of violence. Data in the archive could also help explain political patterns that continue to support a culture of impunity and may someday help heal ongoing distrust of police authorities.
Guatemala continues to suffer from a high rate of homicide, despite its relatively small population that now totals about 14 million. In 2006, the Guatemalan government established a national commission on "femicide" after coming under pressure from the U.S. Congress and human rights groups to address a series of especially horrific murders of women. According to the PDH, 2,318 women were murdered in this small country from 2002-2006, a figure that could be confirmed or challenged by further rigorous data analysis. According to press reports, only 2% of the more than 5,000 murders in Guatemala each year are solved."