Guatemala: Human Rights and the Myrna Mack Case (2003)

Summary: The Committee on Human Rights (CHR) has worked on the case of Guatemalan anthropologist Myrna Mack Chang since she was stabbed to death in 1990 as she was leaving her office at the Association for the Advancement of the Social Sciences in Guatemala City. Myrna Mack had been doing research on and writing about the unjust treatment of the internally displaced people in Guatemala; she was murdered two days after a report for which she was principal researcher, Assistance and Control: Policies Toward Internally Displaced Populations in Guatemala, was published. The CHR has sent three missions to Guatemala since Myrna Mack’s murder. This report focuses on the most recent mission, undertaken in September 2002 by CHR members Mary Jane West-Eberhard and Morton Panish. The delegates attended a portion of the trial of the three former military officers accused of ordering the murder. They also met with social scientists who are investigating the events and aftermath of the civil war or are working for the betterment of civil society in the rural areas. The report concludes that there is a growing risk to these colleagues and that the help and support of the international scientific community is clearly needed.