Can we save the guy who saves Guatemalan street-kids? FWD

Tom Boland (wgcp@earthlink.net)
Fri, 23 Oct 1998 02:15:20 -0400 

This article appeared on Saturday, October 17th, in the Globe and
Mail Canadian Newspaper
See <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/docs/news/19981017/
FocusColumn/FWELLS.html>

Can we save the guy who saves the kids?

Saturday, October 17, 1998
JENNIFER WELLS

In Guatemala City there's a notorious hell hole of a prison called La
Zona Diezyocho,or Zone 18. If you were to visit Zone 18 today you
might come across any one of 15 private and ex-national
Guatemalan policemen who are serving sentences, mostly for
homicide, mostly for having done barbarous things to children.

Bruce Harris is a human-rights activist who helped put them there.
Mr. Harris, a British citizen who is now resident in Costa Rica, has
seen first-hand many horrific abuses suffered by the children of
Latin America's poor.

He has seen too the way in which the politically powerful reap
enormous sums by trafficking Guatemalan babies into the global
adoption circuit. Guatemala's international adoption rules are lax,
and so the country serves as a handy brokerage point for babies
from other regions such as Chiapas, who are brought south to
Guatemala, thence shipped to homes abroad.

Mothers are coerced, documents are forged, bogus birth mothers
sign off on adoption certificates.

Those were the results of an investigation conducted by the
Guatemalan Solicitor-General's Office, with the support of Casa
Alianza, the Latin American arm of Covenant House. Mr. Harris is
executive director of Casa Alianza, the largest provider of food and
shelter to homeless and abandoned youth in the Americas. Casa
Alianza and Mr. Harris were awarded the Olof Palme prize last year
for their "courageous defence" of street children.

A little more than a year ago, the Guatemalan Solicitor-General's
office held a press conference to present the findings of their joint
investigation. Documentary evidence of how babies had been
"acquired," including bribes paid to the public registrar for birth
certificates, was presented.

One of the lawyers who has profited handsomely from the adoption
trade says that in the press conference Mr. Harris alleged she had
used "undue influence" to facilitate adoptions. At the time of the
media event, she was married to the president of the country's
Supreme Court. She sued Mr. Harris for defamation, perjury and
slander.

For Mr. Harris, this is serious business, for in Guatemala
defamation is a criminal, not civil, offence -- and truth is no
defence. If he is convicted, he could face up to five years in prison.
La Zona Diezyocho is the prison in which he would likely serve his
time.

Mr. Harris's voice comes tumbling across the phone wires from
London, where he is set to address the 50th anniversary of the
Universal Declaration on Human Rights. He intends to get his own
situation on the international agenda. He has not yet received the
public support of Amnesty International. "Amnesty's position is that
until I'm locked up, I'm not a victim of the violation of human rights,"
he says.

He is hoping to rouse public opinion. "In general, when people hear
of situations directly from the person who's a victim of them, then
they're moved to action." He is hoping too that the Canadian
government might make representation to the Guatemalan
government on his behalf. Canada has done the right thing in the
past, including institutionalizing DNA testing for international
adoptions.

Mr. Harris should soon get word of a trial date. Within the
Guatemalan justice system, there is, he says, an "eerie sort of
silence . . . a plateau of silence. Something's happening, but I don't
know what."

When he does get word, he will offer himself up. "If I don't go then
I'm playing their game. What they want is for me to shut up. One of
the ways of achieving that is by never letting me back into the
country. So if I don't go I'm immediately in contempt of court."

This case is not simply about Bruce Harris. "If I go to jail, then it's
going to send a a chilling effect against all people who are trying to
defend the most fundamental human rights," he says.

Last week, before he left for London, he flew to Washington,
seeking to have the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
take up the case of the murder of two Guatemalan teen-agers
whose bullet-riddled bodies were found dumped in the street in
Guatemala City in 1994. Much of the evidence has been "lost."
"For five years we've been pushing for justice in Guatemala, and it's
obviously not there," says Mr. Harris.

Yet he doesn't flag. He has even held onto his sense of humour.
"We'll keep in touch," he says. "And if you don't hear from me in
five years you can draw your own conclusion."

END FORWARD


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