Public Prosecutor’s Office Continues Criminalization of Popular Dissent, Election Winners

Four of those detained yesterday continue to call for an autonomous USAC. Photo credit: Still from Diego España video.

Yesterday morning, the Public Prosecutor’s office (MP) went on a criminalization rampage, announcing 27 arrest warrants, detaining five peoples including university students, faculty, and ex-Semilla candidate Marcela Blanco, and conducting more than 30 police raids. The MP also indicated their intention to revoke immunity from president and vice-president elect, Bernardo Arévalo and Karin Herrera, as well as other high-profile legislators, including Samuel Pérez and Aldo Dávila, leaving them vulnerable to prosecution.

Criminalized anti-corruption lawyer Claudia González embraces criminalized ex-Semilla candidate, Marcela Blanco, as Blanco is detained and González enters proceedings to be released on bail while awaiting trial. Photo credit: Still from Jody García video.

These actions mark a continuation of the MP’s use of aggressive criminalization to silence opposition to authoritarian actions at all levels of power, from the state university to the judicial system, to the president and even to Congress. Furthermore, they represent a continuing and illegal assault on the will of the people, as expressed through elections deemed free and fair by national and international observers.

MP Uses Pretext of Student Protests to Criminalize Popular Dissent, Elected Semilla Officials

The arrest warrants issued by the MP against university students, faculty, journalists, and human rights lawyers in the so-called “USAC Takeover” case seek to punish those who spoke out against the forced imposition of Walter Mazariegos as president of the University of San Carlos (USAC), the country’s only public university. Mazariegos, featured on the Engel List for corrupt and anti-democratic actors, proclaimed himself university president on May 14, 2022. Mazariegos was supposed to run against Jordán Rodás, the exiled former Human Rights Ombudsman, who is named on the MP’s warrant list. Mazariegos pulled off a “victory” when Rodás was barred from the elections and just 72 of the 170 possible electors were allowed to vote. Police and armed actors attacked protestors and prevented electors from entering the voting location. Following the election theft, student leaders, accompanied by teachers, Indigenous organizations, and civil society, organized a months-long resistance demanding Mazariegos’s resignation.

Now, the MP is criminalizing popular dissent in the face of university electoral fraud to move forward their efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election. The arrest warrants and raids not only criminalize, harass, and intimidate those who spoke out against Mazariegos’s election theft, but also provide a tenuous justification to strip key Semilla officials of their immunity from prosecution. The MP claimed that Semilla candidates used the university takeover as a “trampoline” to launch their candidacies, citing elected officials’ tweets about the inspiring efforts of the student movement to reclaim the university and the fact that they held press conferences at the university (where, it should be noted, Karin Herrera was a faculty member and had every reason to be present on-site).

Police Repress Protestors as Congress Approves New Supreme Court of Justice Magistrates Under the Cover of Night

This latest wave of criminalization occurred just hours after Congress rushed through late-night decisions on new Supreme Court of Justice magistrates (after the previous batch overstayed their posts by four and a half years) and the makeup of the investigative committee tasked with considering the impeachment of vice president, Guillermo Castillo Reyes, who fell afoul of the Pact of the Corrupt. Almost all of the new Supreme Court of Justice magistrates have been accused of corruption or are affiliated with far-right, pro-military organizations. The Congress’s speedy and secretive late-night decisions were plagued by charges of corruption and vote buying. 2,300 police officers surrounded the congressional building, blocking reporters from covering the Congressional proceedings and committing violence against peaceful protestors outside.

Heavy police presence around Congress, intimidating peaceful protestors and blocking reporters. Photo credit: Carlos Choc

With Indigenous-led peaceful protests reaching the end of their eighth week, an increasingly desperate Pact of the Corrupt is ramping up efforts to suppress the will of the people and avoid a democratic transition.

BTS continues to stand with Ancestral Authorities, Indigenous communities, and civil society members who struggle to protect the rights of all, despite ongoing harassment, criminalization, and violence.