Guatemala brushed aside protests from the United Nations
and pressed ahead Tuesday with shutting down a UN anti-corruption
mission in the Central American country after it began investigating
President Jimmy Morales.
The move, communicated on Monday to the world
body in New York by Guatemalan Foreign Minister Sandra Jovel, has racked
up tensions in the country, where civil organizations have threatened
anti-government protests.
Jovel
gave UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres 24 hours’ notice on Monday
that Morales was terminating the mandate of the International Commission
Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG).
The UN chief said he “strongly” rejected the
decision, insisting the government abide by an international agreement
in place since 2007.
Business leaders and right-wing groups backed
Morales’s decision in a statement, slamming the UN mission for “a
serious lack of due process” and insisting the move was constitutional.
However, outraged humanitarian, indigenous and university organizations called on the government to reverse the decision.
US Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Ohio, also came out in support of the decision and slammed “violations” by the CICIG.
“A nation’s sovereignty is the core of its
freedom,” Lee said in a tweet. “Guatemala has every right to speak up
and defend violations of sovereignty and abuses committed by the
International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala.”
The Guatemala Immortal group urged the
population to support Morales’s decision, saying the CICIG had been
“taking over the justice system.”
Rigoberta Menchu, who won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1992, said Morales’s unilateral decision was “one more sign of
progressive institutional breakdown,” as well as of the rule of law.
Menchu praised the work of the UN mission,
saying it had “contributed significantly to the fight against corruption
and impunity and strengthened the system of justice and democracy in
Guatemala.”
Accumulating tensio
Guatemalan officials sought to bar a Colombian
investigator for the mission from entering the country over the
weekend, and had a lengthy confrontation with the mission leader,
Colombian prosecutor Ivan Velasquez, who Morales has repeatedly tried to
expel from the country.
The commission has typically gone after
high-level officials and corporate executives, including Morales’s son
and brother, who were charged with tax evasion and money laundering in
2016.
The situation worsened in August 2017, when
the CICIG began investigating Morales himself for corruption, involving
his party’s campaign finances when he won the presidency in 2015.
At a news conference in New York late Monday,
Jovel accused the commission of “interference” and said Guatemala was
defending its sovereignty by scrapping the investigative body.
However, Guatemala’s ombudsman Jordan Rodas
said the decision violated international treaties and lodged an appeal
with the country’s Constitutional Court, which had originally endorsed
the mission.
Rodas said Morales’s actions were an attack on democracy and the fight against corruption.
Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s
Americas director, said the move was “the latest blow to the fight
against impunity and clearly shows its worrying lack of willingness to
work toward an independent justice system that guarantees the rights of
all people in Guatemala.”