International rebuke on Saturday swelled over what observers say are efforts to use a politicized justice system to keep Guatemalan president-elect Bernardo Arevalo out of office.
A prosecutor at Guatemala’s attorney general’s office on Thursday moved to strip Arevalo of his immunity from prosecution, accusing him and his running mate of complicity in the takeover of a university in the capital last year.
Arevalo, an anti-graft candidate elected in a landslide in August, called the prosecutor’s move “absolutely illegal.”
Photo: Reuters
In a statement on Saturday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and its Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression condemned the attorney general’s office’s “incessant improper actions and interference.”
“These threaten the democratic order, the ongoing presidential transition process and the individual and collective exercise of civil and political liberties in the country,” the statement said.
Earlier on Saturday, US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols condemned the attorney general’s office’s “malign request” to strip Arevalo and Guatemalan vice president-elect Karin Herrera of immunity in a post on social media.
Also on Saturday, the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas published a letter signed by 29 former heads of state from Latin America and Spain denouncing the “persecution” of Arevalo and Herrera, which has the “repeated and clear purpose of obstructing the sovereign will of Guatemalans, already expressed through free elections.”
Guatemalan Attorney General Consuela Porras, accused by the US government of corruption, has pursued a criminal investigation against Arevalo as well as his center-left Seed Movement party since before his election.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS