Efraín Ríos Montt

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Efraín Ríos Montt Full Name: José Efraín Ríos Montt Alias: The General Origin: Huehuetenango, Guatemala Occupation: President of Guatemala (1982 - 1983) President of the Congress of Guatemala (1995 - 1996, 2000 - 2004) Hobby: Killing Guatemalans Goals: Remain in Power (failed) Crimes: Genocide Ethnic cleansing War crimes Crimes against humanity Human rights violations State terrorism Mass murder Mass repression Torture Kidnapping Type of Villain: Dictator

“	If you are with us, we will feed you. If not, we will kill you.	„
	~ Efraín Ríos Montt

José Efraín Ríos Montt (June 16, 1926 – April 1, 2018) was a Guatemalan general and politician who served as President of Guatemala. Born in Huehuetenango, he was a dictator who took power as a result of a coup d'état on March 23, 1982. He was overthrown by his defense minister, Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores, in another coup d'état on August 8, 1983. He was considered to be the most brutal dictator of Guatemala's civil war; despite only being in power for a little over a year, his tenure in office saw him preside over the most intense stage of the Guatemalan Genocide.

In the 2003 presidential elections, Ríos Montt unsuccessfully ran as the candidate of the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG). In 2007 he returned to public office as a member of Congress, thereby gaining prosecutorial immunity. He was protected from a pair of long-running lawsuits alleging war crimes against him and a number of his former ministers and counselors during their term in the presidential palace in 1982–83. His immunity ended on January 14, 2012, with the end of his term in legislative office. On January 26, 2012, he appeared in court in Guatemala and was formally indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Ríos Montt died in Guatemala City on April 1, 2018, of a heart attack at the age of 91.

Biography

On March 23, 1982, Ríos Montt deposed General Fernando Romeo Lucas García in a coup d'état and seized power, an act which the United States had not foreseen. He became the head of a military junta, which immediately declared martial law and suspended the constitution, shut down the legislature, set up secret tribunals, and began a campaign against political dissidents that included kidnapping, torture, and extrajudicial assassinations.

Ríos Montt's changes sparked a number of guerilla factions which then created a guerilla group known as the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity organization (URNG). Ríos Montt's military junta then began to intensify their efforts and on April 20, 1982 launched an operation known as Victoria 82. Victoria 82 sought first to destroy guerilla bases and forces through counter-insurgency efforts which were "scorched earth" tactics. The plan was most known for its solution to reduce the numbers of the indigenous Mayan people in Guatemala, particularly in the departments of Quiché and Huehuetenango, that, according to the 1999 United Nations truth commission, resulted in the annihilation of nearly 600 villages. One example was the Plan de Sánchez massacre in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, in July 1982, which saw over 250 people killed.

Ríos Montt was an Evangelical Christian, and his religious zealotry gave a theological justification to the massacres, the logic of which has been summed up as follows: "they are communists and therefore atheists and therefore they are demons and therefore you can kill them." Most of the victims practiced traditional Mayan religions.

The administration established special military courts that had the power to impose death penalties against criminals and suspected guerrillas. Tens of thousands of peasant farmers fled over the border into southern Mexico. Meanwhile, urban areas saw a period of relative calm. The June 1982 amnesty for political prisoners was replaced by a state of siege in the following month that limited the activities of political parties and labor unions under the threat of death by firing squad.

In 1982, an Amnesty International report estimated that over 10,000 indigenous Guatemalans and peasant farmers were killed from March to July of that year, and that 100,000 rural villagers were forced to flee their homes. According to more recent estimates, tens of thousands of non-combatants were killed by the regime's Mano Blanca death squad in the subsequent eighteen months. At the height of the bloodshed under Ríos Montt, reports put the number of disappearances and killings at more than 3,000 per month.

On August 8, 1983, Montt's own Minister of Defense, General Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores, overthrew the regime in a coup (during which seven people were killed). The unpopularity of Ríos Montt was widespread, exacerbated by his refusal to grant clemency to six guerrillas during the visit of Pope John Paul II. The military was offended by his promotion of young officers in defiance of the Army's traditional hierarchy. Many citizens in the middle class were alienated by his decision on August 1 to introduce the value-added tax, never before levied in Guatemala.

The killings continued even after Ríos Montt was eased from office in 1983. It has been documented that as many as one and a half million Maya peasants were uprooted from their homes, and that many were forced to live in re-education concentration camps and to work in the fields of Guatemalan land barons. The Maya Indian and campesino population suffered greatly under Ríos Montt's government. Ríos Montt along with several other men who served high positions in the military governments of the early 1980s were defendants in several lawsuits alleging genocide and crimes against humanity; one of these cases was filed in 1999 by Nobel Peace Prize-winning K'iche'-Maya activist, Rigoberta Menchú. In early 2008 the presiding judge, Santiago Pedraz, took testimony from a number of indigenous survivors. The genocide cases saw little progress due to a climate of ongoing and entrenched impunity in Guatemala.

On January 26, 2012, Ríos Montt appeared in court in Guatemala City and was formally indicted by Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz for genocide and crimes against humanity, along with three other former generals. During the court hearing he refused to comment. The court released him on bail, but placed him under house arrest pending commencement of his trial. On March 1, 2012, a judge declined to grant Ríos Montt amnesty from genocide charges, paving the way for a trial. This marked the first time a former head of state was tried for genocide in his home country. On 19 March 2013, his trial for the genocide of at least 1,771 members of the Maya Ixils began. But the trial was suspended by Judge Carol Patricia Flores following a directive from the Supreme Court on 19 April 2013. The judge ordered the legal process to be set back to November 2011, before the retired general was charged with war crimes. A judge annulled the genocide trial in April 2013, a ruling that might have forced prosecutors to begin the case all over again.

On May 10, 2013, Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison (50 years for genocide and 30 years for crimes against humanity.) Ríos Montt is the first former head of state to have been convicted of genocide by a court in his own country. Announcing the ruling, Judge Iris Yassmin Barrios Aguilar declared that "[t]he defendant is responsible for masterminding the crime of genocide". She continued: "We are convinced that the acts the Ixil suffered constitute the crime of genocide...[Ríos Montt] had knowledge of what was happening and did nothing to stop it." The Court found that "[t]he Ixils were considered public enemies of the state and were also victims of racism, considered an inferior race... The violent acts against the Ixils were not spontaneous. They were planned beforehand." Judge Iris Yassmin Barrios Aguilar referred to evidence that 5.5% of the Ixil people had been wiped out by the army.

Ríos Montt's lawyers said he would appeal. On May 20, 2013, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala overturned the conviction, voiding all proceedings back to April 19 and ordering that the trial be "reset" to that point, pending a dispute over the recusal of judges.

Ríos Montt's trial resumed in January 2015. The court decided, due to his alleged senility, that a closed door trial would begin in January 2016 and that if he were to be found guilty, a jail sentence would be precluded, given his condition.

Ríos Montt died in Guatemala City on April 1, 2018, of a heart attack at the age of 91. The government of Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales lamented his passing.