30 Jan 2010

GUATEMALA / JUSTICE

In 2009 Guatemala recorded its highest ever number of violent deaths, but the perpetrators almost always escape the country’s justice system. Human rights activist, Norma Cruz, has made it her personal mission to take on this culture of impunity. UNTV

Posted at: January 30, 2010 12:01 am

Duration: 09:55

Available in: SD

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Full script

STORY: GUATEMALA / JUSTICE SYSTEM
TRT: 9.55
SOURCE: 21 CENTURY
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: SPANISH / NATS

DATELINE: MAY-JUNE 2009, GUATEMALA

SHOTLIST:

MAY-JUNE 2009, GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA

1. Wide shot, city slums and volcano in background
2. Wide shot, traffic
3. Med shot, woman in street 
4. Various shots, security in different areas
5. Various shots, crime scenes with dead bodies
6. Various shots, Norma Cruz at murder site
7. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist: 
"In Guatemala the evidence of the crime scene isn't preserved. Most of the time they take the body away."
8. Close up, leaves soaked with blood at crime scene
9. Various shots, Norma Cruz at crime scene
10. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist: 
"Our country is really sick. I'm tired of living in a society where anyone can gain power by doing harm."
11. Various shots, Norma Cruz at crime scene
12. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist: 
"Unfortunately the prosecutor in this area has a lot of cases that have not led to a conviction. So we are going to make a big effort to make sure the people responsible don't get away with this."
13. Various shots, Norma at funeral comforts mother
14. Med shot, Norma at foundation
15. Med shot, women in waiting room at survivor foundation
16. Med shot, Norma at police watching crime photos on computer
17. Various shots, crime scene
18. Various shots, dead bodies on the ground
19. Various shots, police taking criminal
20. Med shot, computer monitor with pictures of crime
21. Various shots, family of murdered women at foundation
22. Med shot, Norma with her daughter
23. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist: 
"This is the house where the foundation began. In this space was the office."
24. Close up, bullet hole in wall
25. Various shots, Norma Cruz walking with body guard
26. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist:
"There was an assassination attempt on my family that only failed because our driver was skilled and managed to evade the hitman. Sometimes people say that I am reckless, that I take too many risks. But living is not just about breathing. Living is being able to develop yourself fully as a human being. If you limit yourself, if you restrict yourself its as if you're committing suicide."
27. Various shots, body guard
28. Med shot, Norma at her home
29. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist:
"We started confronting the reality of violence against women in 1999 with my daughter's case.  At that time she was 14 years old and it turned out she was a victim of sexual violence carried out by my out by my partner."
30. Various shots, Norma and her daughter
31. Close up, b&w photo of Noriega
32. Various shots, Norma and journalist
33. Close up, Norma newspaper picture
34. Tilt up, Alba Michelle photo
35. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Rosa Elena Diaz, mother of victim : 
"My daughter was found dead in the forest. She was naked."
36. Various shots, photos of Alba Michelle
37. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Rosa Elena Diaz, mother of victim : 
 "I was destroyed. I mean what do I do now? Who can help me? So that was when I got the help of the Foundation, and thank God... or actually thank those women. It's because of them that justice is being done."
38. Various shots, Diaz with psychologist
39. Various shots, lawyer in office
40. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Rootman Perez, criminal lawyer, Survivor Foundation:
"These are guys who are constantly intimidating people in the area and spreading fear."
41. Various shots, recreation of crime scene
42. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Rootman Perez, criminal lawyer, Survivor Foundation:
"It's obvious that the witnesses are terrified for their safety – and not just their personal safety, their family's safety – because they could be put at risk at any moment."
43. Various shots, lawyer in office

ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE HANDOUT

44. Various shots, murder

MAY-JUNE 2009, GUATEMALA

45. Various shots, Perez and Diaz in court
46. Wide shot, Diaz interviewed by press
47. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Carlos Castresena, Chief, Commission Against Impunity:
"Underground criminal networks have been established in the institutions, the ports, the airports, the public prosecutor's office, the police, the courts."
48. Close up, commission logo
49. Wide shot, supreme court building
50. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Carlos Castresena, Chief, Commission Against Impunity:
 "Guatemala ended a 36-year-long civil war in 1996 and has tried to build a peaceful democracy - but it has inherited very weak institutions. Nobody expects anything of them and nobody trusts them."

ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE HANDOUT

51. Various shots, civil war 
52. Various shots, crime-drugs scenes

MAY-JUNE 2009, GUATEMALA

53. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Carlos Castresena, Chief, Commission Against Impunity:

"We have asked for almost everything to be changed – and for a new law that would reform the supreme court and the appeal courts. We want to make sure that the almost everything to be changed – and for a new law that would reform the supreme court and the appeal courts. We want to make sure that the courts employ the best and the most honest judges – judges who serve Guatemala - not pressure groups or just one of the sides in a legal case."
54. Various shots, street scenes
55. Med shot, Norma Cruz in car
56. Close up, photograph of Norma Cruz with Clinton and Obama
57. Med shot, Norma Cruz with little girl
58. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist:
"Justice is quite simply healing - it's part of the process of therapy and recovery. Everyone is always astonished that I am an optimist. I really bet on us being able to change this. And I say: It's not step by step, it's case by case that we are going to change this reality."
59. Wide shot, Norma Cruz walking

STORYLINE:

Beneath a volcano, the crowded streets of Guatemala's capital:  and everywhere, signs that violence is never far from people's minds: armed security guards outside clothes shops, in front of candy stores, and on buses, keeping vigil.

Night and day, police recover dead bodies from the streets. In 2009 the country recorded its highest ever number of violent deaths. The perpetrators almost always escape justice.

Human rights activist Norma Cruz has made it her personal mission to take on this culture of impunity. Today, she's investigating a new murder scene, helping find evidence she fears the police may have missed.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist:

"In Guatemala the evidence of the crime scene isn't preserved. Most of the time they take the body away."

On a forest path, leaves soaked with blood. The bodies of three sisters, aged between seven and twelve, were found here. Their throats had been slit, and there's evidence that the oldest child had been raped.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist: 
"Our country is really sick. I'm tired of living in a society where anyone can gain power by doing harm."

Cruz resolves to support the girls' family by launching a private prosecution (which is permitted under Gautemala's legal system).

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist: 
"Unfortunately the prosecutor in this area has a lot of cases that have not led to a conviction. So we are going to make a big effort to make sure the people responsible don't get away with this."

Cruz goes to the girls' village to attend the funeral and tries to comfort their mother.

Cruz's organization, called the Survivor Foundation, presses for DNA samples to be taken from the bodies. They uncover the story behind the murders. Three local men kidnapped the girls, planning to ask their father for a ransom of 1500 US dollars. They then discovered the father didn't have the money, they killed the girls with a machete. All three men now face trial for murder and rape.

Most of the Survivor Foundation's investigations involve assaults on women, domestic violence, sexual abuse and homicide, which are all commonplace in Guatemala.

Today the Foundation is a last resort for hundreds of frightened and battered women. It's a long way from its modest beginnings in Norma Cruz's home in Guatemala City.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist: 
"This is the house where the foundation began. In this space was the office."

There was opposition from the beginning, this bullet hole dates from an attack in 2006, and to this day, threats from organized crime groups mean that Cruz cannot go anywhere without a body guard.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist:
"There was an assassination attempt on my family that only failed because our driver was skilled and managed to evade the hitmen."

Sometimes people say that I'm reckless, that I take too many risks, but living is not just about breathing, living is being able to develop yourself fully as a human being. If you limit yourself, if you restrict yourself, it's as if you are committing suicide.

Cruz's activism is deeply personal; it was triggered by a disturbing revelation within her own family.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist:
"We started confronting the reality of violence against women in 1999 with my daughter's case.  At that time she was 14 years old and it turned out she was a victim of sexual violence carried out by my partner."

Her partner was a powerful a man, Arnoldo Noriega, a former leader of the country's rebel movement. Against the odds, Cruz pressed ahead with a prosecution and he was given a ten-year sentence. The case not only broke the silence surrounding sexual abuse, it made Cruz a national figure.

An especially high profile case taken on by Cruz and the Foundation involved the murder of yet another young girl.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Rosa Elena Diaz, mother of victim: 
"My daughter was found dead in the forest. She was naked."

Alba Michelle España was only eight years old. She was the lead singer of the church choir and had won the Miss Chiquitita beauty pageant in Camotán, her hometown in Guatemala's eastern lowlands.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Rosa Elena Diaz, mother of victim: 
"I was destroyed. I mean what do I do now? Who can help me? So that was when I got the help of the Foundation, and thank God, or actually thank those women. It's because of them that justice is being done."

The Survivor Foundation offered support from a psychologist, while the Foundation's criminal lawyer, Rootman Perez, launched an investigation, and established that a child trafficking ring was involved.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Rootman Perez, criminal lawyer, Survivor Foundation:
"These are guys who are constantly intimidating people in the area and spreading fear."

The story behind the murder began to emerge. Women from Alba Michelle's village took her captive. They planned to hand her over to the trafficking ring in exchange for money, but their exit routes were blocked by villagers who suspected she had been kidnapped.

Michelle knew her abductors, and there was no way out, the women decided to kill her and dump her body in the forest. The child trafficking ring did everything it could to stop the investigation.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Rootman Perez, criminal lawyer, Survivor Foundation:
"It's obvious that the witnesses are terrified for their safety – and not just their personal safety, their family's safety – because they could be put at risk at any moment."

The threats weren't idle. A state attorney involved in the case was killed. Despite this, Rootman Perez, assisted by testimony from Alba Michelle's mother, successfully brought murder convictions against two women who were both given 50 year sentences. A further investigation into the child trafficking ring is still continuing.

But beyond the victory in this case lies a far larger struggle – against the corruption and criminality that poison every level of Guatemala's society.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Carlos Castresena, Chief, Commission Against Impunity:
"Underground criminal networks have been established in the institutions, the ports, the airports, the public prosecutor's office, the police, the courts."

Carlos Castresena heads the Commission Against Impunity which was set up by the United Nations and the Guatemalan Government.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Carlos Castresena, Chief, Commission Against Impunity:

"Guatemala ended a 36-year-long civil war in 1996 and has tried to build a peaceful democracy - but it has inherited very weak institutions. Nobody expects anything of them and nobody trusts them."

Today the Commission is taking on the daunting challenge of disbanding the country's entrenched array of criminals, including powerful drug traffickers and is pressing for a radical overhaul of the country's legal system.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Carlos Castresena, Chief, Commission Against Impunity:

"We have asked for almost everything to be changed – and for a new law that would reform the Supreme Court and the appeal courts. We want to make sure that the almost everything to be changed – and for a new law that would reform the Supreme Court and the appeal courts. We want to make sure that the courts employ the best and the most honest judges – judges who serve Guatemala - not pressure groups or just one of the sides in a legal case."

Castresena sees a long, hard road ahead – but without these change, he says, Guatemalans are not living in a true democracy.  He also believes that activists like Norma Cruz can make a crucial contribution.  Cruz herself recently gained recognition overseas, when she received the International Women of Courage Award from the United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and US first lady Michelle Obama.

Even though she lives under constant threat, Cruz chooses to continue her search for justice. She believes it's a necessity, both for her and for the country as a whole.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Norma Cruz, Human Rights Activist:
"Justice is quite simply healing - it's part of the process of therapy and recovery. Everyone is always astonished that I am an optimist. I really bet on us being able to change this. And I say: It's not step by step, it's case by case that we are going to change this reality."