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No idea when he was born, or where. He went to John Hopkins, apparently, and has a "postgraduate degree in foreign policy" (this is pasted all over the web) but it would be nice to get more detail on what degree he has exactly, when he graduated, etc.Eniagrom (talk) 16:15, 13 December 2010 (UTC)Reply
In 1975 he worked for the Central Nacional para Trabajadores (CNT), the National Center for Workers.
The CNT is elsewhere referred to as Central Nacional de Trabajadores or in English as the National Workers Union. What do you know, there's a wikipedia article (stub) at Central General de Trabajadores de Guatemala
At the time he was studying law there was no human rights law (in Guatemala, presumably).
Irma Flaquer had promoted a human rights commission (the first, again presumably in Guatemala) before she disappeared, and there was an attempt to create it at that time.
From a young age he worked with various Catholic youth groups, and then founded and worked for the Comité pro Justicia y Paz, the Committee for Justice and Peace. Worked in the instruction of catechists in the interior of the country as well as in the union school they (the committee) had.
http://www.eurosur.org/FLACSO/mujeres/guatemala/part-11.htm this link confirms the creation of Comité pro Justicia y Paz in 1984, but doesn't name La Rue specifically as a founder, saying only that it was founded by Christians. Since La Rue left Guatemala in 1981, perhaps this is a different organization with the same name?
This was the time of Lucas García, whom everyone regarded as an enemy.
They had to change their way of life, going from a public and legal trade union to a life in hiding.
He tried to stay in Guatemala as much as possible and continued working with the Church, but soon was forced to look to his own safety.
He left Guatemala in the first half of 1981 with the idea of going to Washington DC.
He did so, via Mexico.
His decision was motivated by the possibility of going to a place where he could file a formal complaint, because of the bloodbath going on in Guatemala at the time. He spoke a little bit of English and the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was in DC. So he fled to Washington and lived there in exile for 12 years.
After the coup, the Rios Montt massacre began, and he received a special call from San Martín Jilotepeque and San Juan Comalapa. He joined with a number of other exiled Guatemalans, including Rigoberta Menchu, and decided to go to the UN General Assembly in New York in 1982 to denounce what was happening. They filed a complaint and got a resolution passed in the UN General Assembly (ref?) and the process began. The following year in February they went to the Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
As an exile in the US, he learned how to work with the UN's legal framework and also became familiar with the OAS and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. He also studied Human Rights, a course of study unavailable in Guatemala at that time.
He founded a "Committee of Friends of Guatemala" in the US House of Representatives, which had as members six to eight US congressmen who followed all the events in Guatemala. He also met a number of senators who showed deep interest in Guatemala and continue to do so to this day. This culminated in President Carter cutting off all military aid to Guatemala in 1989, a policy that continues to this day.
Carter wasn't president in 1989, but he did levy an arms embargo against Guatemala in 1977. This was overturned by Reagan in 1983, at the height of the genocide. Perhaps I've misunderstood this bit, I'll have to go back and check. At any rate the policy does not continue to this day.
Specific bit: Desde 1989 por parte de presidente Carter se cortó la ayuda militar de EE.UU. hacia Guatemala y hasta el día de hoy esa ayuda no ha regresado. Not a strong Spanish speaker, have I misunderstood it?
In 1990 he founded CALDH in Washington DC as a result of the massacres going on in Guatemala. The idea was for the organization to present cases before the Inter-American system. At the time no such organization existed. In 1991 they opened an office in Guatemala but he stayed in Washington. CALDH's purpose has always been the processing of cases.
He returned to Guatemala four times during his exile, going back in 1988, 1989, and in 1992 when Rigoberta Menchu received the Nobel Peace Prize. Each visit was short and aimed at providing international support.
He returned to live in Guatemala for the first time during the Serrano administration, and was present for the May 1993 Guatemalan constitutional crisis, which resulted in him and his entourage leaving the country briefly. In June 1993 Ramiro de León Carpio became President of Guatemala and he saw this as his opportunity to return and end his exile in the US -- he returned alone, without international support, and gave a press statement at the time so that people would know he had returned.
After his return to Guatemala he began to move CALDH's operations from Washington DC to Guatemala City.
CALDH brought the first genocide case against Guatemala's military dictatorships (when did this happen?)
According to him, the actual work on the case was mainly done by a pair of Scottish human rights lawyers who were volunteering at CALDH at the time (apparently not unusual, as they had always had a number of international volunteers). The case documented more than ten massacres in Guatemala which are cited as examples of what the Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH, Historical Clarification Commission) calls "Local Partial Genocide." (what is that exactly?)
According to the CEH, the genocide began under the last month of Lucas Garcias' term in October 1981, but worsened in 1982 and 1983 under Rios Montt. Guatemala thus suffered two and a half years of genocide.
Presenting the case in the Guatemalan national court system was done with the idea of making the justice system work, as genocide is a fully qualified crime in the Guatemalan penal code, and because they believed that it was necessary for the justice system to respond to the crime.
The case remains open (as of the time of the interview, when?) in the Public Ministry and has not made much progress since it was introduced.
He was given the job of Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights under President Berger and Vice President Stein (in 2003), which according to him was not a politically motivated decision because he had not campaigned for them and was not a member of any political party.
Before accepting the position he put forth three conditions, which according to him were all met: 1, that they would be serious about the issues and would change state policies accordingly. 2, of those state policies, the most important was the recognition of truth, for all the previous state governments had engaged in denial -- even President Azru, who had signed a peace treaty, would not receive the Commission's report because it mentioned genocide. 3, that they would permit me to do some thinking and make some public pronouncements about human rights issues.
This resulted in the Berger/Stein administration formally recognizing the Guatemalan government's role in human rights abuses, atrocities, and genocide, and the launch of a new peace agenda base on the recognition of truth on February 25th (2004).
There's an archived Reuters blurb at http://www.preventgenocide.org/americas/guatemala/ dated Feburary 26th 2004 that discusses the government's apology. Apparently, the President stopped short of calling the bloodshed genocide and members of the military denied any genocide had taken place.
His friendship with Dr. Piero Gleijeses, professor at John Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies and author of a book on the Guatemalan coup of 1954 (Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States) motivated him to pursue a graduate education there.
He was further motivated by a desire to understand US foreign policy, because of the great importance it has on Central America and Guatemala.
Presented Bill No 4087 to the Guatemala congress, which defined community radio. He underscored the importance of community media, noting that Guatemala did not have a system for community radio, with bands being auctioned to private interests -- thus giving a voice only to those who could pay. This resulted in numerous pirate radio stations, which were often criticized, criticism he did not agree with. Instead he felt there was a place for publically funded but independent radio, such as the station run by the Academy of Mayan Languages.
Publically supported a law in Argentina on the allocation of audiovisual distribution -- meaning radio and television. The law stated that none of the three types of transmission -- commercial, community, and public -- could take up more than one third of the available frequencies. The law thus capped, for example, private commercial radio and television stations to only one third of available frequencies. While he feels that individual countries should come up with percentages appropriate to their own situation, in principle he feels the law is a step in the right direction because it breaks up state and commercial monopolization of the airwaves. In Guatamala, according to him, television is completely controlled by a single person, which is bad for free expression. This public support caused some political comotion in Guatemala's congress because some (according to La Rue, allies primarily of the television monopoly) accused him of violating the idea of freedom of expression by advocating ceilings on frequency distribution.
Very excited about internet connectivity, which falls into his long standing support of community radio -- he is against internet censorship and very concerned about commercial interests dominating dialog on the internet, he believes the internet must remain free and open and accessible to communities everywhere, including and especially poor and remote communities.
Works against youth violence, particularly as relates to gangs. (There are a lot of details about this in the interview that I'm not getting into, since they don't really deal with Mr La Rue himself).
Because my Spanish is relatively basic there may be some minor errors above, but I think if we can get some of this stuff into the article it will sort itself out.
Eniagrom (talk) 11:17, 14 December 2010 (UTC)Reply
User keeps removing edits related to sex harrasment claim
Latest comment: 6 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
There is a user that keeps hiding information related to sex harrasment claims. Can the edits this user made be reversed and the pge locked? Gongontfm (talk) 10:14, 23 February 2018 (UTC)Reply
I have reverted his changes, and if he reverts again he will be in violation of WP:3RR. However I did this simply because he seems to be reverting without discussion, not because I disagree with his decision to revert. This article is a biography of a living person, and WP:BLP applies. That means that salacious gossip published in occasionally disreputable sources like the Daily Mail may not be suitable for inclusion. The information must be reliable and notable. I would suggest that those of you that think it is and those of you that think it's not try to come to some understanding here on the talk page, and if you can then consider arbitration. Eniagrom (talk) 16:19, 2 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
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