2 harassment[s] against witnesses, judges, prosecutors, police officers, attorneys, employees of the MMF, and next of kin and friends of [Myrna Mack Chang];” c) that on June 7, 2002, Helen Mack Chang, president of the Myrna Mack Foundation, received a death threat from a group called “Guatemaltecos de verdad” [“True Guatemalans”], in which they sought to discredit those who defend human rights by stating that they are “enemies of the fatherland [...] who must pay for this with their blood [and] feel the taste of the steel of our bullets,” and the threat ended with the statement: “activist seen... activist dead;” d) that given said threats, as well as information on an operation being planned to kill her, Helen Mack Chang accepted an invitation by the United States government to attend a course and left Guatemala on July 19, 2002; e) that Helen Mack would return to Guatemala on August 10, 2002, to attend the oral debate of the trial against the accessories before the fact in the execution of her sister Myrna Mack Chang, for which she was summoned “unexpectedly by the judicial authorities for September 3;” f) that on July 25, 2002, unknown persons, who refused to identify themselves with the guard of the condominium, attempted to enter Helen Mack’s home; g) that the regular staff of the Myrna Mack Foundation have suffered a series of acts of harassment and threats in recent years, as well as recent acts of intimidation, given the impending aforementioned oral trial (supra 2.e); h) that on July 19, 2002, Viviana Salvatierra was asked questions in an unusual manner by a taxi driver who was driving her from the Myrna Mack Foundation to her home, regarding aspects directly pertaining to Helen Mack and the MMF, among others, and i) that on July 22, 2002, América Morales Ruiz, in charge of the Documentation Center of the MMF, was asked questions by Otto Chapeta, the taxi driver who was driving her from the Foundation to her home, regarding the cases being processed by that foundation and the Colonel Juan Valencia Osorio’s connection. 3. The additional statement by the Commission, in its request for provisional measures, that: a) there is an obvious pattern of harassment and threats against persons who, due to their activities as judicial operators, expert witnesses, and next of kin of Myrna Mack, have participated in the legal proceedings to elucidate her death. This situation, that occurs shortly before the oral debate in the trial for the murder of Myrna Mack, demands that the protection mechanisms of the inter-American system be activated in a timely and effective manner; b) the special vulnerability of those who defend human rights in Guatemala is especially grave in the case of Helen Mack Chang and the other members of the Myrna Mack Foundation; c) the extreme gravity of the situation is evident because Helen Mack Chang’s life is in danger, she was insulted and intimidated by her aggressors, and she has obtained information on the existence of an operation planned against her; it is also