INTERNATIONAL RIVERS NETWORK/WITNESS FOR PEACE
PRESS RELEASE Thursday, May 9, 1996
NGOs Demand World Bank Investigation Into 1980s Massacres at Guatemalan Dam
Report Reveals 376 Murdered After Resisting Eviction
International Rivers Network and human rights group Witness for Peace have
today written to World Bank President James Wolfensohn calling for an
independent investigation into World Bank involvement with Guatemala's
Chixoy Dam. A recent report from Witness for Peace* reveals that between
1980 and 1982 some 376 people, mostly women and children, were brutally
murdered in a series of massacres when they resisted eviction from their
village of Rio Negro to make way for the Chixoy Reservoir.
The World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) both gave two
loans for the Chixoy Dam, the World Bank's second loan being made in 1985 -
after the massacres took place. Internal reports from the World Bank and
IDB refer to problems with resettlement at Chixoy but nowhere mention that
more than one in ten of the people supposed to be resettled were murdered
shortly before the reservoir filled.
After years of living in fear, survivors of the atrocities first began to
speak to outsiders in 1993. In November of that year forensic experts began
to exhume the bodies from the largest massacre.
The Witness for Peace report says:
"If the [World] Bank knew about the massacres, then giving an additional
loan to the project was at best a calculated cover up, and at worst an act
of complicity in the violence. If the Bank did not know about the
slaughter, then it was guilty of gross negligence. Either way, the Bank is
implicated in the horrors perpetrated against the village of Rio Negro in
1982."
Patrick McCully, Campaigns Director of International Rivers Network says:
"We believe that these shocking revelations require an independent
investigation to discover whether or not Bank project staff knew about the
massacres and if so why these were not reported in subsequent Bank
documents. If it is concluded that Bank staff were unaware of the massacres
then it should be investigated how they were able to remain ignorant.
"The Chixoy massacres hold important lessons for the consequences of
funding forced resettlement in countries with repressive regimes. An
investigation into this matter is also extremely important given the
tendency seen in other projects for Bank staff to ignore or suppress
information on the real impacts of their projects on local people."
While the Rio Negro massacres occured in the context of the brutal
government counterinsurgency campaign which left 72,000 Guatemalans dead or
missing between 1980 and 1984 alone, local church workers, journalists and
the survivors themselves all directly link the massacres to attempts to
evacuate the reservoir area. All deny that there was ever any organized
guerrilla activity in Rio Negro.
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* A People Dammed: The World Bank-Funded Chixoy Hydroelectric Project and
its Devastating Impacts on the People and Economy of Guatemala. Witness for
Peace, Washington, DC, May 1996.
For more information:
Tom Ricker, Witness for Peace (202) 544 0781
Patrick McCully, International Rivers Network (510) 654 9803
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BACKGROUND
The campaign of terror against the indigenous Maya Achi community of Rio
Negro began in early 1980 after the villagers refused to move to the
cramped houses and poor land at the resettlement site provided by the
Guatemalan power utility INDE. In March 1980, military policemen based at
the dam site shot seven people in Rio Negro. The villagers chased the
police away and one, according to the people of Rio Negro, drowned in the
Chixoy River. INDE and the army, however, accused the villagers of
murdering the policeman and of being supporters of the country's guerrilla
movement.
In July 1980, two representatives from Rio Negro agreed to a request from
INDE to come to the dam site to present their resettlement documents. The
mutilated bodies of the two men were found a week later. The documents were
never found.
In February 1982, 73 men and women from Rio Negro were ordered by the local
military commander to report to Xococ, a village upstream from the
reservoir zone which had a history of land conflicts and hostility with Rio
Negro. Only one woman out of the 73 villagers returned to Rio Negro - the
rest were raped, tortured and then murdered by Xococ's Civil Defense
Patrol, or PAC, one of the notorious paramilitary units used by the state
as death squads.
On March 13, 1982, ten soldiers and 25 patrollers arrived in Rio Negro,
rounded up the remaining women and children and marched them to a hill
above the village.
Witness for Peace's harrowing account of what happened on the hill is
pieced together from interviews with survivors.
"They were strangling many of the women by putting ropes around their necks
and twisting the ropes with sticks. They were also beating other women with
clubs and rifles, and kicking and punching them. 'I remember one woman, '
[Jaime, a survivor who was ten years old at the time] relates, 'a soldier
jumped up and kicked her in the back. He must have broken her spine,
because she tried to get up but her legs wouldn't move. Then he smashed her
skull with his rifle.'
"The patrollers killed the children by tying ropes around their ankles and
swinging them, smashing their heads and bodies into rocks and trees."
Seventy women and 107 children were killed. Only two women managed to
escape. Eighteen children were taken back to Xococ as slaves for the
patrollers.
Two months later, 82 more people from Rio Negro were massacred. In
September, 35 orphaned children from Rio Negro were among 92 people machine
gunned and burned to death in another village near the dam. Reservoir
filling began soon after this final massacre.
The Witness for Peace report states that, 'the Rio Negro victims died
because they blocked the "progress" of the Chixoy Project.' Many villagers
believe INDE encouraged the violence so that their officials could pocket
compensation payments due to the villagers. 'I'll tell you the real reason
for the violence', one survivor said, 'they wanted our land for their
cursed reservoir and dam, and we were in the way.' A member of a Guatemalan
human rights group says: 'The Chixoy Dam was built with the blood of the
inhabitants of Rmo Negro.'
The IDB lent Guatemala $105 million to build Chixoy in 1975 and a further
$70 million in 1981. The World Bank lent $72 million for the dam in 1978
and another $45 million in 1985. The banks appear to have turned a blind
eye to the massacres and to have refused to acknowledge them in project
documents: no references to the massacres are made in any of the funders'
internal reports on Chixoy which outside researchers have been able to
obtain.
According to local people, everyone at the dam site and virtually everyone
in the region knew about the massacres. Nine World Bank missions visited
the dam in the years following the massacres. In early 1984 the Bank
employed an expert to supervise the resettlement operation.
The closest the World Bank's confidential 1991 'Project Completion Report'
on Chixoy comes to mentioning the mass murders is a reference to the
resettlement plans as 'conceptually . . . seriously flawed' and a mention
of 'delays in implementing the program due to intensive insurgency activity
in the project area during the years 1980-1983 - two resettlement officers
were killed while performing their duties . . .'
Chixoy was not only a human rights disaster. Construction was beset with
geological problems which - together with corruption - caused the dam's
total cost to soar to some $1.2 billion, 521 per cent higher than forecast
in 1974. The dam began official operation in 1983, but after only five
months had to be shut down for repairs. It did not restart operation for
two years. Since then it has been plagued with technical problems and a
shortage of water in its reservoir.
The World Bank's Project Completion Report says that 'With hindsight
[Chixoy Dam] has proved to be an unwise and uneconomic disaster'.
Witness for Peace as part of the Campaign for Peace and Life in Guatemala
have helped survivors of the Rmo Negro massacres build a monument honoring
those murdered. (ENDS)
____________________________________________________
9 May, 1996
Mr James Wolfensohn
President
The World Bank
1818 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433
Dear Mr Wolfensohn,
Please find enclosed a copy of A People Dammed: The Impact of the World
Bank Chixoy Hydroelectric Project in Guatemala, a new report from human
rights group Witness for Peace. A People Dammed describes a series of
massacres of people from Rmo Negro, a community which had opposed being
evicted to make way for the Chixoy Dam. Some 376 people - around one in ten
of those supposed to be resettled - were murdered before reservoir filling
began in late 1982. The World Bank lent $72 million for Chixoy Dam in 1978
and gave a second loan of $45 million in 1985, three years after the worst
of the massacres.
Despite the close link between the reservoir resettlement programme and the
massacres documented in A People Dammed, no mention of the atrocities
occurs in any World Bank documents to which we have been able to gain
access, including the Latin America and Caribbean Regional Office's 1991
Chixoy Project Completion Report and the Operations Evaluation Department's
1992 Project Performance Audit Report.
Witness for Peace conducted extensive research in the region around Chixoy
Dam and interviewed many massacre survivors and other local people. They
have found that everyone at the dam site and virtually everyone in the
region knew about the massacres. It is thus extremely disturbing that the
nine World Bank missions which visited the dam between January 1983 and
June 1989 either did not report on the massacres, or if they did report on
them, this information was not referenced in the Project Completion Report.
The Bank was directly involved in the resettlement programme: according to
the PCR, in early 1984 the Bank 'retained the services of an expert on
resettlement policy to assist in the supervision function.'
We believe that this matter requires an independent and comprehensive
investigation to discover whether or not Bank project staff knew about the
massacres and if they did know why this was not reported in subsequent Bank
documents. If it is concluded that Bank staff were unaware of the massacres
then it should be investigated how they were able to remain ignorant of the
atrocities.
Although these events occurred more than a decade ago, we believe that they
hold important lessons for the consequences of funding forced resettlement
in countries with repressive regimes. We also believe that an investigation
into this matter is extremely important given the tendency seen in other
projects for Bank staff involved in project appraisal and monitoring to
mischaracterize the impacts of Bank-funded projects on local people.
We look forward to hearing from you on this important matter.
Sincerely,
Owen Lammers
Executive Director
International Rivers Network
Paul Scire
Executive Director
Witness for Peace
cc: Enrique Iglesias, President, Inter-American Development Bank
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Patrick McCully, Campaigns Director, International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
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