Between 30 April and 5 May over 40 SMS text messages were received by nine members of staff at SEDEM and UDEFEGUA. In some cases the same message was sent to several staff members. For example, on 2 May two of the staff members received the following message, although badly spelled: “You’ve got 1 hour, this is the last warning. Stop messing with us, military declassified files. We’ll kill your kids first, then you” (Tienen 1 hora esta es la última advertencia. Déjense de meter con nosotros, archivos desclasificados del ejército. Le quebraremos el culo a sus hijos después será a usted.” Both organizations have asked Amnesty International to withhold the names of the victims.

On 4 May, two unidentified men in a dark green car with tinted windows parked outside the house of one of the staff members. The staff member called the police, who interviewed the suspects on the spot. The police later informed the victim that the two men were armed and that they had a valid licence to carry the weapons. The police officers also said that they let the two men go because there was no evidence to think that they were posing a threat. On the same morning two other staff members received an SMS text message, which read: “I am watching you...It’s good that you didn’t go to work, I have my sight set on you. Son of a bitch…you’re scared.” (“Te estoy vigilando… Qué bien que no fuiste al trabajo, te tengo bien en la mira. Puta de mierda… Tenés miedo.”)

The spate of death threats and intimidation seems to be linked to the campaign that SEDEM and other Guatemalan human rights organizations have carried out in order to secure the release of all military files containing information about gross human rights violations committed during the internal armed conflict. After an almost 3-year-long judicial battle, on 9 February 2009 the Constitutional Court ordered the Guatemalan authorities to hand over some of these files. The government partly complied with the order on 6 March but said that the rest of the files were missing. The Public Prosecutor’s Office has been charged with an investigation into the loss of the remaining files.

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