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CENTRAL AMERICA |
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Four Gang
Members Lynched in Guatemala
GUATEMALA CITY – Four members of the
ultraviolent Mara Salvatrucha gang were
beaten and burned alive by a mob in the
northwestern Guatemalan province of
Huehuetenango, police said Thursday.
The provincial police chief, Luis Say, said
the incident took place Wednesday in the
indigenous community of San Isidro.
He said the four gang members wounded a
65-year-old money changer during a robbery
in La Mesilla and then fled in a taxi. Area
residents learned of the crime and set out
after the perpetrators, catching up with
them in San Isidro.
Guatemala has experienced more than 300
fatal lynchings since 1996 and human rights
activists documented upwards of 100
instances of vigilante justice in the
country last year.
More than 100 lynchings have occurred in the
Central American nation so far in 2009,
leading to 28 deaths, according to the
Mutual Support Group, or GAM, a human rights
organization.
The comparable figures for the first nine
months of 2008 were 94 and six,
respectively, GAM director Mario Polanco
said last week, blaming the increase in
lynchings on “desperation” over the failure
of Guatemala’s institutions to “provide
security and impart justice.”
The more than 5,400 homicides reported last
year in Guatemala – a nation of
approximately 13 million – was nearly equal
to the number of murders in neighboring
Mexico, which has more than 100 million
inhabitants and is the scene of open war
among rival drug cartels. EFE |
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