The Proyecto Interdiocesano de Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (Inter-Diocese Project for the Recovery of the Historic Memory, REMHI) was launched in 1994 by the Archbishop's Office for Human Rights (ODHA) of Guatemala. The goal of the project was to collect individual and group testimonies of the violence suffered by the Guatemalan population between 1960 and 1995 (ODHA 25 June 1999).

On 18 September 1997 the Cerigua Weekly Briefs reported:

Since its beginning in late October 1994, the Recovery of the Historical Memory (REMHI) project has collected almost 6,000 testimonies about the atrocities committed during more than three decades of civil war here. An initiative of the Archdiocesan Human Rights Office (ODHA), REMHI was set up as a kind of parallel to the official truth commission -- called the Historical Clarification Commission -- established as part of the December 1996 peace accords.

In the collection of testimonies, REMHI allowed citizens to approach any pastoral worker3/4a priest, nun, or "involved" lay person (laico comprometido)3/4who would in turn guide the person to an interviewer authorized to collect testimonies (ODHA 25 June 1999). Interviewers had an identification card issued by ODHA and the bishop's office of their diocese; interviews could also be carried out at a centre opened in each diocese (ibid.). REMHI was reportedly committed to maintaining the confidentiality of its sources, although admitting that the project entailed risks (ibid.).

The project actually began in 1995. Central America Report states:

In 1990, Bishop Gerardi founded the Archbishop's Human Rights Office (ODHA), which five years later would initiate the Recuperation of Historic Memory Project (REMHI), coordinated by Gerardi. Under his supervision, over the next three years pastoral agents recorded more than 6,500 interviews, almost two-thirds of which were in one of 15 Mayan languages.

On April 24 [1998], Gerardi presented REMHI's final report. The 1,400-page, four-volume document provides the first detailed analysis of the long bloody struggle between leftist guerrillas and a series of US-backed military governments. It documents 14,291 separate acts of violence, which produced 55,021 victims. Church leaders pointed out that the report described only part of the violence, which included killings, disappearances, torture, rape, threats, and illegal detentions (1 May 1998).

The Central America Report (CAR) article adds:

The report includes descriptions of 422 massacres, 401 of which were committed by the army or paramilitary death squads. The Church said that guerrilla forces carried out 16 of the massacres, and could not establish responsibility for five of the massacres contained in the report.

In a section of the report entitled "The road to social reconstruction," REMHI analysts make a series of recommendations on how the Guatemalan government could help rebuild this war-torn country. These include indemnification for victims and a school curriculum that describes honestly what happened during the war.

The report also calls for government and guerrilla leaders to admit their responsibility for the violence. It recommends that those responsible for human rights violations be purged from the military and not be allowed to run for public office. It suggests that streets and parks named after military officials should be renamed, and statues of generals taken down. The report calls for the Kaibil counterinsurgency school in the northern Petén jungle to be closed as well as the elimination of the notorious Presidential Military Guard (EMP) (ibid.).

A later CAR article adds information on the work done to produce the final report, titled Guatemala: Never Again ("Guatemala: Nunca Más"):

Guatemala: Never Again is more than a statistical report of past human rights abuses. It is, above all, the result of a process that took three years to carry out, in which promotors worked arduously within hundreds of communities to motivate witnesses of human rights violations to speak out as a means of "recuperating their voice, learning the truth, and dignifying their dead."

Thirteen offices were set up, with the collaboration of the dioceses of El Quiché in the western highlands, north-central Alta and Baja Verapaz, western highland Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango, San Marcos and Sololá, eastern Izabal, and south coast Escuintla. The data and the interpretation in the report were based on bibliographic analysis, 25 socio-political studies, the testimony of 6,500 people, of whom 92% were victims and the rest were responsible for the violations. Sixty-one percent of the testimonies were gathered in 15 Mayan languages, principally in Q'eqchí (19%), Ixil (15%), and K'iche (12%). The remaining interviews were carried out in Spanish.

Guatemala: Never Again is a study largely based on testimony, that provides a close view and analysis of the qualitative impact of terror. Although REMHI does not directly characterize as ethnocide the events of the most violent years (1977-1987), the report as a whole describes the devastating destruction of the collective and individual identities of the victims of the violence, 75% of whom were indigenous.

The report states that the army and paramilitary groups are responsible for violating the human rights of 85.4% of the victims. In the countryside, the military applied a policy aimed at destroying communities or exercising cultural and social control over their population, considered social bases of support for the guerrillas (8 May 1998).

However, CAR later states that "the contents and conclusions of the REMHI report were not widely reported, overshadowed by the assassination of Bishop Juan Gerardi, two days after its presentation" (ibid. 29 Jan. 1999).

Amnesty International (AI) reports in its electronic edition of the Annual Report 2000 on the situation of persons related to REMHI:

Victims of threats and harassment [in 1999] included human rights, trade union and indigenous activists, journalists, religious leaders and lawyer, as well as witnesses, relatives and others involved in trying to clarify past human rights abuses. Only moments after the end of Bishop Gerardi's funeral service, Archbishop Próspero Peñados and other members of the clergy, and local human rights activists received telephone death threats. One threatened foreign priest fled abroad, in fear of his life. In July (1999) renewed threats were made against ODHA and REMHI workers after delegates from both groups made declarations, during a visit to Europe, protesting at shortcomings in the inquiry into Bishop Gerardi's murder (Jan. 2000).

Please note that full-edition Amnesty International annual reports 1998 through 2000 are available at Regional Documentation Centres.

No reports of threats or harassment of specific individuals nor details of their circumstances could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum. Please find attached a list of additional sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Amnesty International, London. 10 June 1999. Annual Report 1999. "Guatemala." http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport/ar99/amr34.htm [Accessed 15 Mar. 2000]

Central America Report [Guatemala City]. 29 January 1999. "Guatemala: Truth Commissions Probe the Past." http://www.worldcom.nl/CAR/magazi/2604-4.htm [Accessed 15 Mar. 2000]

_____. 8 May 1998. "REMHI Report: Truth and Justice Before Pardon." http://www.worldcom.nl/CAR/magazi/2517-1.htm [Accessed 15 Mar. 2000]

_____. 1 May 1998. "Guatemala: Never Again?" http://www.worldcom.nl/CAR/ magazi/2516-1.htm [Accessed 15 Mar. 2000]

Cerigua Weekly Briefs [Guatemala City[. 18 September 1997. No. 36. " Recovering Memory3/4the Work of the Catholic Church's "Truth Commission " http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~pavr/harbury/archive/cerigua/cwb36_97.html [Accessed 15 Mar. 2000]

Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado (ODHA), Guatemala City. 25 June 1999. "Cinco preguntas sobre el proyecto interdiocesano "Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica." http://www.odhag.org.gt/paginasc/razon.htm [Accessed 16 Mar. 2000]

Central America NewsPak [Austin, Tex.]. 1998-1999.

IRB Databases.

Latin American Regional Reports: Central America & the Caribbean [London]. 1998-Feb. 2000.

News From Human Rights Watch [New York]. 1998-Mar. 2000.

Refworld.

Internet websites, including:

Human Rights Watch.

Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado (ODHA).

Internet search engines, including:

Google

Metacrawler