Armed men posing as police officers have forced their way into the house of one of Central America’s most prominent human rights lawyers, in the latest episode of an escalating wave of intimidation against legal officials.
At least a dozen men ransacked the house of Ramón Cadena Rámila, Central America director of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, on Monday morning.
The assailants forced a security guard and his family to wait outside on their knees while they ransacked the property.
Cadena, who has played a key role in high-profile human rights cases including the suspension of a lawyer representing former military dictator Efraín Rios Montt, was not at home at the time of the raid.
The attack is the latest in a string of threats against human rights lawyers and prosecutors in Guatemala over the past year.
Chief prosecutor Thelma Aldana was forced to leave the country earlier this year after authorities received information about a plan to assassinate her. Last week, civil society groups called for urgent measures to protect Aldana after she reported a drone circling above her home.
Aldana has suffered a torrent of online abuse and threats since she oversaw the ignominious fall from power of former president Otto Perez Molina and vice-president Roxana Baldetti in a customs corruption scandal which shook the region.
But the attacks against prominent lawyers and activists have intensified since the arrest in January of 14 ranking former military officers for alleged crimes against humanity during the country’s civil war.
A few days after the arrests Cadena, who is an expert witness in the case, and two other prominent human rights lawyers were formally accused of participating in an array of crimes including threats, illegal association and organized crime by the Foundation against Terrorism. The litigation has been widely condemned as malicious by international organisations.
Cadena told the Guardian that lawyers taking on powerful interest were increasingly subject to threats and violence.
“I believe this morning’s attack is related to my work as a lawyer. Here in Guatemala we’re living under tremendous insecurity, and attacks against human rights are increasingly all the time,” said Cadena. “I am very worried … I hope I am provided with security.”
Environmental and land activists have also borne the brunt in recent years, accounting for 80% or 643 of all attacks against human rights defenders in Guatemala in 2014, according to the NGO Unit for Human Rights Defenders (UDEFEGUA).
Cadena is involved in the La Puya community’s battle to stop a huge American gold mine amid arguments surrounding the legality of the mining concessions and the violent persecution of community activists.
Annie Bird, director of Rights and Ecology who works with human rights defenders in the region, said: “Ramón Cadena is perhaps the most important figure in human rights in the Central America, accompanying the most significant [legal] cases in Guatemala and Honduras. This is a message to all of the human rights lawyers in the region.”