Death threats against Guatemalan human rights organisation
A death threat received by a FAFG employee30 March 2006
A Guatemalan anthropologist and members of his family and staff have recently received death threats because of his work investigating gross human rights abuses committed during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war.
Front Line is concerned about the safety of Fredy Peccerelli, head of the Guatemala Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG), his sister Bianka Peccerelli, his brother-in-law and colleague Omar Giron de Leon, his brother Giani Peccerelli, his ex wife Jeannette Peccerelli and all the staff at the FARG.
FAFG is a non-governmental organisation that investigates, documents and raises awareness of human rights violations through forensic examination. FAFG’s forensic anthropologists exhume clandestine mass graves and analyse human remains in order to enable criminal prosecutions to be brought against the perpetrators: many of whom are walking Guatemala’s streets freely. To date, FAFG have exhumed over 400 graves and examined 3000 skeletal remains
Almost 200,000 died during Guatemala’s civil war – most of them during the scorched earth policy unleashed on the country’s indigenous population under the 18-month rule of the Dictator General Rios Montt.
On 15 March, Fredy Peccerelli received a text message threatening to kill his siblings. Two months prior to this, on 9 January he received a text message threatening to murder his brother Gianni if the exhumations did not stop (see photo on homepage). The following day Fredy’s Sister Bianka and her husband Omar Giron de Leon, Laboratory Coordinator at FARG, received an anonymous threatening letter through their mailbox (see photo).
These are not the first instances of intimidation against the forensic team at FAFG and their families – unfortunately, they are a frequent occurrence.
Fredy’s ex-wife Jeannette Peccerelli has been receiving 24-hour police protection since August 2005 – a man put a gun to her head while her car was stopped at traffic lights and told her they were watching her husband very closely. In January this year she was followed by an unidentified man while she was shopping with her two children and police escort.
In 2003, two men in an unmarked car aimed a gun at Bianka Peccerelli while she was driving. In March of the same year two, unidentified men asked her husband Omar Giron de Leon if he was an employee of FAFG and threatened to kill if he did not give them his mobile phone. Following the theft, some people whose numbers were stored on Omar’s phone began to receive threatening phone calls.
Fredy Peccerelli’s home was broken into in April 2003. FAFG documents and his passport were stolen. Earlier that month shots had been fired at his front door
From mid 2003 there was a visible lull in the frequency of attacks and threats against FARG employees and their relatives. However, with the threatening at gunpoint of Jeannette Peccerelli in August 2005 and a letter deposited through Omar Giron de Leon’s letterbox in September 2005 threatening all FAFG employees, the campaign of intimidation seems to have resumed its previous fervour.
All the above incidents have been reported to the Ministerio Publico (Public Prosecutors Office) and to the Guatemalan police but no investigation has resulted in the detection or the conviction of the perpetrators.
Under a 2002 Inter American Commission on Human Rights order, Bianka Peccerelli, Omar Giron de Leon, Fredy Peccerelli and other member of FARG, receive precautionary protection but there are concerns that the level of protection they are receiving is inadequate – three days before Omar Giron de Leon and his wife received a death threat on 9 January, the police officers stationed outside their home, ceased showing up to work and while some of the victims are receiving 24 hour police protection; not everybody is.
Front Line is extremely concerned about the safety of those working at FAFG and their relatives and has called on the Guatemalan authorities to provide immediate security to guarantee their safety and to bring about an immediate investigation into the threats against these human rights defenders and their families.