Guatemala plans bigger army despite war abuse past
23 Sep 2008 15:33:16 GMT Source: Reuters
By Sarah Grainger SAN JUAN SACATEPEQUEZ, Guatemala, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Hit by a surge in violent crime, Guatemala is planning to increase the size of its army for the first time since a civil war marked by military massacres and abuses ended in 1996. President Alvaro Colom, who took office in January on a left-of-center platform, has asked Congress to approve a bigger military budget and boost the number of soldiers by around 60 percent to 25,000 by 2010. It is a reversal of the policy of previous presidents who have cut troop numbers gradually to 15,500 since the end of a 36-year war between Marxist guerrillas and the government that killed around a quarter of a million people. A U.N.-backed Truth Commission found the army committed 85 percent of the civil war killings, including hundreds of massacres of civilians. Despite that brutal history, the decision to put more troops on the street to fight criminals is popular, as murder rates soar out of control with youth gang members, drug traffickers and corrupt police terrifying the population. "Some villages are very dangerous. Crime is a menace," said Jeronimo Iquic, 50, a bus driver and father of seven in the crime-ridden highland town of San Juan Sacatepequez near the capital. Maya peasants bore the brunt of the army's violence during the war but even in this largely indigenous town Iquic said he was now more concerned about the safety of his children than rights violations. Guatemala has one of Latin America's highest murder rates, with more than 45 homicides per 100,000 people in 2006, eight times more than in the United States. Frustrated by an inept justice system that leaves well over 90 percent of murder cases unsolved, vigilantes have taken the law into their own hands, forming heavily armed citizen patrols or lynching suspected criminals. TEENAGER LYNCHED Last week in the town of San Pedro Yepocapa, a crowd of locals beat a teenager to death in a public park, accusing him of being part of a gang that robbed a bus and raped two women and two girls. The government deployed 100 military police and soldiers after the lynching to restore calm. Colom's predecessor as president, Oscar Berger, slashed the size of the army even more than was mandated by the peace accords that ended the war in 1996, reducing the number of troops from 27,000 to 15,500. The plan for a bigger army shocks some still haunted by the military's massacres in the civil war. "Before, the army did many things, and if their numbers are increased, it could all happen again," said human rights activist Felipa Aju, 48. "Many are still afraid of the army. Its a fear that has stayed with us." Colom's proposal is up for vote in Congress on Nov. 30 and has wide support. The president's uncle -- also a leftist politician who ran for president -- was killed in an army ambush in 1979. Guatemala recently sent hundreds of troops, presidential guards and anti-drugs police to its border with Mexico where heroin poppies and marijuana are cultivated and South American cocaine passes through on its way to the United States. (Editing by Kieran Murray)
A boy plays in an area cordoned off with police tape at a police station burned by an angry lynch mob in San Pedro Yepocapa, Guatemala September 16, 2008. Villagers burned ...
