The legal director of a Guatemalan human-rights group was in Vancouver this month to raise international awareness about a plan to bring genocide charges against former dictator General José Efraín Ríos Montt.

Ríos Montt deposed former president Romeo Lucas García in a military coup in March 1982.

During Ríos Montt’s brief reign, which ended in August 1983, many thousands of people were massacred and hundreds of Mayan villages were destroyed in a scorched-earth campaign launched by his predecessor.

Paul Seils, a 35-year-old Glasgow-born lawyer and legal director of the Guatemala City–based Department for Justice and Reconciliation (which is the legal department for that country’s Centre for Legal Action on Human Rights), told the Straight that his group has collected evidence from 70 of the 627 massacres.

After being advised of the potential consequences, witnesses have agreed to testify in connection with 25 of these attacks. Seils said that approximately 100,000 indigenous people were killed during an extermination campaign in 1981 and 1982.

“We have worked in some communities that genuinely didn’t know until we told them that there was a community 20 miles up the road that was also massacred,” he said.

That was because many victims didn’t speak Spanish, and there were poor communications at the time, which was in the midst of a 36-year civil war. The war ended in 1996.

Of the 25 massacres for which evidence has been compiled, he said, 10 were committed during Lucas García’s regime, and the other 15 occurred while Ríos Montt was ruling the country. Seils said that a criminal complaint has already been brought against Lucas García, and his group will act as coprosecutors if the case goes ahead.

“In the Lucas García case, there are about 83 eyewitnesses to the 10 massacres, most of whom have been interviewed,” Seils said. In addition, there will be interviews with military officials, historians, and forensic analysts.

He also said that his organization plans to approach a Guatemalan public prosecutor in May or June with a criminal complaint against Ríos Montt, who is president of the Guatemalan congress. As a member of congress, Ríos Montt would normally enjoy immunity from these charges, but Seils said that he was recently stripped of this privilege after being charged in connection with a taxation and liquor scandal.

“Some people say you have a window of opportunity while he is stripped of his immunity,” he said. “That is probably the line that we will try to take.”

Seils acknowledged that there are potential dangers for anyone involved in the prosecution of Ríos Montt, and it may take anywhere from two to 10 years before the matter is concluded.

He said that one of his primary objectives is educating anyone with an interest in Guatemala or in justice issues to be aware of this situation so they can bring international attention on the case if goes ahead. He emphasized that the prosecutions are necessary to bring about reconciliation within the country, because despite two major reports on the massacres, there hasn’t been much acknowledgment among the nonindigenous population of the extent of the killings.

“Even if we fail in Guatemala, we think it’s a valid objective to pursue,” he said. “The story has to be told because no one really has taken it seriously, certainly inside Guatemala, other than victims.” Anyone interested in receiving updates can contact the centre by e-mail at dejure@caldh.org.

“If you add up El Salvador, Nicaragua, Argentina, and Chile—which are the four [Latin American] conflicts that people know about most usually in North America—the four of them together don’t add up to the death toll in Guatemala,” Seils said.

The group’s work is being financed by the Dutch and British governments and Oxfam in Great Britain, with additional help expected from the United Nations Development Program and European Commission.