The Sira Center presents an “amicus curiae” document outlining the impacts of this forced disappearance on the family, impacts that are still present more than 40 years later.
On February 13, 1982, Emil Bustamante Cruz, The 32-year-old veterinarian and rural sociologist left his home in Guatemala City early to attend a meeting. He said goodbye to his wife, Rosa María Cruz, He told her he would be home by noon. However, he never returned.
Some testimonies claim that Emil was detained by a group of soldiers at one of the checkpoints they had set up throughout the capital. However, despite this connection, no authority in the country has ever offered any information about his whereabouts. Furthermore, they have ignored the various complaints and requests for an investigation that the family has filed over the years.
Since the disappearance, Rosa María Cruz and her two daughters, Mercedes Flores y Ana Isabel, They have always suffered the silence of the judicial system and the State. This has subjected them to a constant process of retraumatization and deepening of their grief, which has worsened over time, causing irreparable moral and psychological damage. Added to this is the political persecution they have endured for decades for being considered “relatives of the guerrillas” or “terrorists” in Guatemala, which has forced them to migrate and constantly change their address for their safety, preventing them from building a stable life. Rosa, Flora, and Ana still live in anguish and fear, immersed in a state of distrust and constant vigilance.
It is precisely because of the nature and severity of these impacts that the Sir[a] Center, through an amicus curiae brief, argues that Emil Bustamante's wife and daughters should be considered as victims of torture and the State of Guatemala, as the main responsible party. The authors of the report, the legal advisor of the Sir[a] Centre, Sara López Martin, and the entity's clinical director, Pau Pérez Sales, They attest to the psychological and moral damage suffered by the family during the years of searching and argue why this level of anguish and suffering can be equated to the definition of torture.
Image taken from the documentary «"The Suffocation" (2018), directed by Ana Isabel Bustamante, daughter of Emil Bustamante.
According to the United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT), states are responsible for investigating, prosecuting, and investigating non-state actors who commit acts of torture, if they have evidence of such acts. Otherwise, they will be considered directly responsible for the crimes. Therefore, the authors argue that this logic should be applied even more strongly, given that it was precisely state actors who kidnapped Emil Bustamante.
The disappearance of the veterinarian is part of a systematic pattern of disappearances of political dissidents that took place between 1960 and 1996, during the country's armed conflict, in which at least 40,000 enforced disappearances occurred. This strategy aimed not only to silence political dissidents but also to punish their families and spread fear within communities, deterring anyone who dared to oppose the government. According to the report's authors, these actions caused significant and prolonged psychological suffering to Carlos Bustamante's family, and, given that it was an intentional act, it would fall under the United Nations Convention's definition of torture.
This amicus curiae brief is an express request from Evelyn Recinos Contreras, the lawyer representing the wife and daughters of Emil Bustamante, to be submitted to the Human Rights Committee during the admissibility phase of the case. The lawyer contacted the Sir[a] Center following the publication of the Special Issue of Torture Journal—of which Pau Pérez is editor-in-chief—focused on the consideration of enforced disappearance as torture.
The impact of enforced disappearance on families
Enforced disappearance is a human rights violation that involves two types of victims: the direct, who suffers the violence of kidnapping, the anguish of being held in an unknown place and, in many cases, physical and psychological torture; and the hints, The families who bear the burden of not knowing what happened to their loved one, the reasons for their disappearance, or if they are still alive.
On numerous occasions, the level of anguish and suffering inflicted on family members has been considered by the medical, legal, and psychological communities to be serious enough to be equated with torture. According to research and survivor accounts, the suffering of loved ones is not only permanent but also... transgenerational. That is, it is passed down from parents to children, even involving grandchildren. Furthermore, as the report's authors point out, the impacts of enforced disappearance—fear, anguish, alertness, uncertainty, etc.—extend both within the community and throughout society as a whole.
Regarding the need to recognize the suffering of families of enforced disappearances as torture, the clinical director of the Sir[a] Center, Pau Pérez Sales, argues throughout the amicus cuariae Studies comparing the psychological and psychiatric consequences of torture victims and the families of the disappeared show more significant long-term impacts on the latter. Family members face chronic depression and symptoms of re-experiencing the trauma, while also suffering a breakdown of their fundamental beliefs about the world. The threats and withholding of information to which states subject family members result in harm such as post-traumatic stress, persistent guilt, and a profound difficulty in coping with the idea of a possible death, among other issues.
The State of Guatemala, responsible for the crimes of torture
He amicus curiae Prepared by the Sir Center[a] argues that it is appropriate to consider the family of Emil Bustamante as victims of torture at the hands of the State of Guatemala, based on the precedent that both the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court and that of the European Court of Human Rights recognize the relatives of detained-disappeared persons as victims, as a consequence of the suffering generated by the events.
From this perspective, the organization's legal team argues that while the primary purpose of enforced disappearance may not have been to inflict permanent suffering on the family, it can be maintained that among its (secondary, but plausible) objectives was to punish and/or intimidate the "relatives of the guerrillas," as well as to discourage their potential involvement, or that of third parties, in similar activities. In this regard, it is worth recalling that, as the Report states... “Guatemala Never Again” According to the Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala, the enforced disappearance of regime opponents was a state policy. Therefore, we are dealing with specific actors (public officials) who inflict significant (and prolonged) psychological suffering for a specific purpose. All of these elements fit the United Nations Convention's definition of torture.
”“If I hit you at the edge of a cliff, I have to be able to anticipate that you could fall and die,” says lawyer Sara López Martín.
However, should this interpretation not be accepted by the Human Rights Committee, insofar as it could be argued that the direct purpose (the intent) of the enforced disappearance was simply to prevent the discovery of evidence (the body) – and not the suffering of the relatives – the Sir[a] Centre team raises the need to incorporate what is referred to as “eventual intent”That is, the need to anticipate that some actions will have plausible consequences for others. “If I hit you at the edge of a cliff, I have to be able to anticipate that you could fall and die,” says lawyer Sara López Martín.
In this regard, it is argued that the State of Guatemala should have considered that the enforced disappearance of Emil Bustamante would have immediate and long-term impacts of enormous gravity on his family, as the amicus brief itself attests. “Even if the direct intent of the action was not this, as a potential consequence, it generates an impact in the form of severe and prolonged suffering for the victim,” the lawyer points out. Thus, far from alleviating the suffering, the State has maintained a policy of silencing and impunity, which has only exacerbated the harm done to the victims.
Finally, the organization argues that, following General Comment No. 2 of the Committee against Torture, a State will be held responsible if, having evidence that non-State actors commit acts of torture, it fails to prevent, prosecute, and convict the perpetrators. It argues that this logic should be applied even more strongly when State actors are the perpetrators of torture, as in the present case. The plaintiffs have actively reported their case and requested information from the Guatemalan State, without receiving a response to date.