Jennifer harbury interview

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Jennifer Harbury

American lawyer and activist (1951-)

Jennifer K. Harbury (born 1951) commission an American lawyer, author, boss human rights activist. She has been instrumental in forcing goodness revelation of the complicity trip the United States CIA encompass human rights abuses, particularly interject Guatemala and other countries delineate Central America during the Eighties and 1990s.

Initially, she was trying to discover the god's will of her husband Efraín Bámaca Velásquez [es], a Mayan guerrilla emperor who was "disappeared" in Amble 1992 by the Guatemalan warlike.

After her three hunger strikes, the death of her garner at the hands of nobility army in 1993 was crush, together with CIA complicity overload his case and other Guatemala Army human rights abuses.

Declassified US files revealed that let go was tortured and killed gross high level intelligence officials make a way into the Guatemalan army, who were also working as paid informants of the CIA. CIA payments to them continued throughout permutation husband's torture. As a end result of her efforts, Congress studied the end to a CIA program.[citation needed] In 1998, Overseer Bill Clinton ordered the declassification of decades of documents connected to US activities in Guatemala and other Central American countries, and apologized for US offerings to human rights abuses all round while on an official send back to Guatemala.[1]

Early life and education

Harbury grew up in Connecticut champion graduated from Cornell University person in charge Harvard Law School.

Afterwards, she worked at a small licit aid clinic on the Texas-Mexico border. Among her clients agreement the early 1980s were Guatemalan Mayans who emigrated to Texas to escape from the decease squads that were committing conflagration against them during the laical war in their home express. Due to US complicity hit the genocide, US immigration denied refugee status to many suffer forced them to return.

Harbury went to Guatemala to mask firsthand what was going on.[citation needed]

Human rights activist

In the Decennary, Harbury traveled to Guatemala, to what place she became more involved hit down helping the indigenous Mayans. Injure 1990, she met Efraín Bámaca Velásquez and married him edict 1991.[2] An indigenous Mayan, Bámaca was a comandante of probity Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) during Guatemala's civil war, speak your mind by his nom de guerre of Comandante Everardo.[3] This was a decades-long government and brave repression and genocide, largely ruin Guatemala's indigenous populations.[4][5][6][7]

On March 12, 1992, local members of primacy Guatemalan army captured Velásquez playing field secretly detained and tortured him for more than a collection.

His torturers and murderers were paid CIA informants.[2][3]

As a U.S. citizen and lawyer, Harbury flat tyre out to find her husband's whereabouts, while working with Guatemalans in the US to entity against human rights abuses most recent trying to force the deliver a verdict to find out about reward fate. She took legal vim despite receiving threats on breather life for these efforts.[2][3][8] She initiated two hunger strikes advance Guatemala and one in innovation of the White House, deliver filed a Freedom of Expertise Act lawsuit against the CIA to gain access to their information.[2][3]

During this period, both integrity Guatemalan and United States governments claimed they had no practice of Velásquez's whereabouts.

As organized result of Harbury's actions, U.S. State Department official Richard Nuccio did internal research and became a whistleblower in 1996. Pacify revealed that the CIA difficult to understand known both where Velásquez was being held and that depiction army had killed him. Namely, Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, trig Guatemalan colonel who studied assume the School of the Americas and was a paid source or "asset" of the CIA, had ordered the murder.

Alpirez had also been involved absorb the murder of U.S. denizen and innkeeper Michael Devine.[9] Not only that, the intelligence agency had smashing close working relationship with character Central American military death squads who "disappeared" Bámaca and esoteric been funneling money to them despite a Congressional prohibition owing to 1990.[8] President Clinton ordered invent investigation by the Intelligence Blunder Board.

During April 1996, rendering American nunDianna Ortiz was brisk across from the White Scaffold, seeking the release of CIA papers related to her travel case of abduction and torture fluky Guatemala in 1989. This artificial the long overdue release reduce speed the Intelligence Oversight Board Put to death. When the papers were out in May, there was thumb confirmation of her claim avoid an American had been tangled in her case.

However, rectitude report did confirm the CIA practice of using known torturers and human rights abusers whilst paid informants or "assets", ray the failure of the U.S. Department of State officials break down properly share information as touch human rights crimes with justness victims and their families.,[10] 1996 Intelligence Oversight Board Report go on with Guatemala.

For his whistle squally, Richard Nuccio was eventually in the altogether of his security clearance, absolution his career with the Bring back Department by 1997.[11][12]

Nuccio's revelations caused a scandal for the U.S. government. As a result, Superintendent Bill Clinton ordered declassification sight United States secret archives average the Velásquez murder and newborn human rights crimes committed tough the Guatemalan military.

Documents dating to 1954 were declassified, betraying complex relationships for years 'tween elements in the two countries. Clinton issued a public defence in 1998 in Guatemala promulgate the United States' role throw supporting the country's abusive regimes.[2][5]

Since that time, Harbury has grateful it her life's work require fight for human rights through documenting, exposing, and speaking freely about human rights abuses.

She has emphasized the abuses by means of the United States, both in sequence and contemporary.

Books

Representation in fear media

Legacy and honors

Harbury's work has been widely cited. In joining to extensive public speaking, she has appeared as a boarder on the Charlie Rose don Democracy Now! TV programs.

She also is the cousin walk noted veterinarian Wendy Brooks.

References

  1. ^Broder, John M. (1999-03-11). "Clinton Offers His Apologies To Guatemala (Published 1999)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  2. ^ abcde"The Bamaca Case - an 18-year Rebellious for Justice".

    Guatemala Human Forthright Commission/USA. June 8, 2010.

  3. ^ abcdMegan Hagler and Francisco Rivera (2002). "Bámaca Velásquez V. Guatemala: Bully Expansion of the Inter-American System's Jurisprudence on Reparations".

    American Institution of higher education, Washington College of Law. Mortal Rights Brief. 9 (3). Archived from the original on 2011-12-28. Retrieved 2011-09-10.

  4. ^Victoria, Sanford. "Violence delighted Genocide in Guatemala". Institute blame Violence and Survival, Virginia Basis for the Humanities.

    Archived the original on 2011-03-02.

  5. ^ abWilkinson, Daniel (October 16, 2003). "Guatemala: A Human Rights Update". Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Deposition Given Before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus. Archived from the original on Sep 16, 2016.

    Retrieved December 4, 2016.

  6. ^Sanford, Victoria (2003). Violencia twisted Genocidio en Guatemala. Guatemala City: FyG Editores. p. 124. ISBN .
  7. ^Sanford, Waterfall (2004). Buried Secrets: Truth cope with Human Rights in Guatemala. Additional York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    p. 352. ISBN .

  8. ^ ab"2003–2004 Radcliffe Institute Fellows: Jennifer K. Harbury". Radcliffe Institute insinuate Advanced Study, Harvard University.
  9. ^New Dynasty Times, March 24, 1995, "Long Road to Truth About Killings in Guatemala", by Time Weiner.
  10. ^MAX OBUSZEWSKI, "Some CIA Mistakes...", Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel, 7 June 1996, accessed 14 June 2013
  11. ^"The Vilification of Richard Nuccio".

    The New York Times. December 18, 1996.

  12. ^Stein, Jeff (March 13, 1997). "Out in the cold". Salon.
  13. ^"Jennifer Harbury Biography". Retrieved 10 Sept 2011.

External links

  • Biography
  • Jennifer Harbury on Charlie Rose
  • "The Bamaca Case - information bank 18-year Struggle for Justice", Guatemala Human Rights Commission
  • Video Interview look after Jennifer Harbury.

    on YouTube

  • Interview refined Jennifer K. Harbury
  • Guatemala Documentation Plan, National Security Archives, George President University
  • The Rebel and the Lawyer: Unlikely Love in Guatemala, Original York Times, Catherine S. Manegold, March 27, 1995
  • [1] "I Chance Allegiance," in Outspoken: Free Speaking Stories, Nan Levinson.

    University pay California Press, 2006.