89 enemy” due to the activities she carried out. In this regard, expert witness Mónica Pinto (supra para. 127.i), in her expert opinion before the Court, stated that: Myrna Mack was executed in 1990. I do not recall the exact date. It was not the only execution in 1990, there were others. And in reality, summary executions in Guatemala have had various profiles over time. After a stage of massive, collective summary executions that would be part of various policies such as the “Scorched Earth” policy or some others, came the more selective summary executions. Myrna Mack was working in a sensitive area, perhaps for political considerations, and on the other hand, the way she was executed determined that it was not a traditional murder. Myrna Mack suffered 27 knife wounds. […] [M]y mandate does not extend to the time of the facts in which Myrna Mack lost her life. The interpretation of the four reports that I submitted to the Commission is that basically the whole treatment of the issue of refugees by a broad segment of power in Guatemala is very close to considering that refuge was practically synonymous to membership in the guerrilla forces. Myrna Mack was working on the topic of refugees and was working on the causes, and at a given moment Myrna Mack became a dangerous element. How intense was this danger? I do not know whether this is precisely the interpretation that might have made the authorities decide that Myrna Mack should be eliminated. Yet obviously all the circumstances were in place at the time in which I drafted the first of the reports to reach the conclusion that the way in which Myrna Mack had lost her life was not due to a mere homicide, that it was not due to any matter of passion, but rather that it stemmed from a policy that had decided, in a premeditated manner, that it was necessary to get rid of Myrna Mack. 143. Witness Lucrecia Hernández Mack, daughter de the victim (supra para. 27.c), likewise stated before the Court: [m]y mother was killed for political reasons. At the time she was conducting, and had already conducted, research studies on the internally displaced population in Guatemala. In other words, a civilian population that had been harassed and persecuted by the Guatemalan Army. And she was hearing the testimony of these persons and the institutional policies of the State regarding [...] these persons. She was letting people know, and had published a book in which she clearly stated the existence of these populations and also how the Army had been massacring within the country and had been violating human rights within the country. This was obviously not convenient for the Army and therefore they saw my mother as a threat and she then became a target and that is why they murdered her. It was for political reasons. And well and this is something that they denied from the start, that it could be for political reasons. 144. In this regard, the CEH Report concluded, with respect to Myrna Mack Chang case, that it: deems that this human rights violation is an example and consequence of the harmful discourse that, during the years of internal armed confrontation, identified the internally displaced population and the intellectuals who studied their problems as enemies of the State. The CEH deems that those who decided to murder Myrna Mack sought, based an erroneous intelligence assessment of the role of this professional and her anthropological activity, to send an intimidating message, in general, to the communities of displaced persons and, specifically, to the institutions and persons who were concerned about their living conditions.236 236 Cf. report by the Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico, “Guatemala, memoria del silencio” in June, 1999, volume VI, pages 243 to 244 (file with annexes to the application, annex 42, leaves 792 to 793).

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