3 de septiembre 2024
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On Wednesday, August 28, six independent experts from the United Nations added their voices to the multiple and authoritative denunciations over the last two years, all decrying the arbitrary imprisonment of Guatemalan journalist Jose Ruben Zamora. The UN group included Alice Jill Edwards, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; and Irene Khan, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
In a revealing report, they called on the authorities to urgently address the allegations of inhumane conditions suffered by the journalist during his long pre-trial detention. “We are seriously concerned that Mr. Zamora, 67, hasn’t received adequate medical treatment for his physical and mental conditions, thus endangering his life (…) The conditions that Mr. Zamora has been experiencing violate the absolute prohibition of torture or other cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatments or punishments,” reads one paragraph of the report.
The larger problem is that although the Executive power, President Bernardo Arevalo, supports the demand (for better conditions and release), the journalist’s fate lies in the hands of those who head Guatemala’s judicial branch. These authorities have ignored the general clamor, in a display of total disrespect for justice.
Amnesty International declared Zamora a “prisoner of conscience” at the beginning of August 2024. For over 20 years, Zamora directed the now-extinct newspaper El Periodico. Under his leadership, the media outlet published many exposes of irregular activities on the part of several past governments. One of their best known investigations dealt with the case known as “Magic Carpet,” which involved alleged bribes received by former Guatemalan President Alehandro Giammattei (2020 – 2024) in return for favoring a group of Russian businessmen and allowing them to operate a Guatemalan port.
The Attorney General’s office never investigated Giammattei or his political circle. Instead, they filed false charges against the journalist, accusing him of money laundering. In July 2022, they succeeded in locking him up on pre-trial detention. Later, he was also accused of obstructing justice and ongoing forgery of documents. In June of 2023, he was sentenced to six years in prison for the first charge, but his sentence was subsequently annulled for due process violations. The second case is still awaiting trial; meanwhile, 67-year-old Zamora remains in prison.
The UN document was made public two days after a judge mandated Zamora to house arrest for the money laundering case. However, he must remain in prison while awaiting trial for the second charge of obstruction. His jail conditions have improved since Bernardo Arevalo came to power in January of this year, yet there’s not much more the President can do for him, for the simple reason that he, too, is a victim in this political environment of a Judicial Power – in particular the Attorney General – utterly filled with anti-democratic forces who scorn the Rule of Law.
These same figures, in complicity with Congressional deputies linked to the so-called “Pact of the Corrupt,” did everything possible to undermine President Arevalo’s legitimate electoral victory and block him from assuming the presidency. They’re also the ones who are set on punishing Jose Ruben Zamora for honorably exercising his journalist’s profession and exposing instances of corruption.
Consuelo Porras, Guatemala’s Attorney general and the principal force behind these maneuvers, is determined to hold doggedly onto into her position until her appointment ends. She was sanctioned months ago by the United States for “undermining justice in Guatemala,” as was Ricardo Mendez Nuñez, who leads the Foundation Against Terrorism, a far-right platform that served as plaintiff in the case against the journalist.
Today, Zamora has become a double symbol: on the one hand, of the free press, arbitrarily criminalized for having valiantly confronted corruption and darkness; and, on the other, of a government divided between a democratic Presidency at the service of the law, and political and judicial operators determined to maintain their arbitrary power and their privileges, backed by economic elites resistant to change.
The conclusion is that, despite some democratic advances, Guatemala has not yet succeeded in overcoming the conditions that for so many years have held them back from adequate development, full respect for civil liberties, and the independent exercise of justice. That’s more than enough reason to insist on denouncing the capricious imprisonment that Jose Ruben Zamora is suffering, and to support in every way possible the civic efforts of President Arevalo and the majority of Guatemalan society.
*Editorial published in the Costa Rican newspaper “La Nacion”.
