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Defend Bruce Harris

To: Guatemalan Embassy
I am writing to ask for your support in defending Bruce Harris, Regional Director of Latin American programs for Covenant House (also called Casa Alianza, a New York-based nongovernmental organization), who is facing up to five years in jail in Guatemala for having spoken out about the involvement of lawyers and notaries in questionable activities in that country¹s lucrative international adoption business. By way of background, Harris, a British citizen, is a major figure in the international human rights community. (He is featured in Kerry Kennedy Cuomo¹s Speak Truth to Power and is the 2000 winner of the prestigious Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Award.) Harris has been a tireless advocate for street children throughout Central America, putting himself at personal risk to protect these kids from sexual exploitation and murder‹in Honduras for example, 1,210 young people have been murdered since January 1998‹and to provide them with food, shelter and schooling. He is an honorable man and an indispensable figure in the lives of poor children in Guatemala City, Tegucigalpa and other cities in Central America. The situation I am writing you about began in September 1997. Harris was a guest of Guatemala¹s Attorney General, Asisclo Valladares, at a press conference where they announced the findings of a six-month joint investigation into the illegal trafficking of Guatemalan and Mexican babies who were sent to other countries for adoption. According to the investigation, Susana Luarca (formerly Susana de Umaña), a notary and lawyer, used her position to pressure court employees and judges to facilitate her adoption cases. Umaña is also a legal advisor to an orphanage run by an American woman from which many international adoptions take place. At the time, she was married to the President of the Guatemalan Supreme Court. A few days after the press conference, Ms. Umaña charged Harris (but not the Attorney General) with defamation. In Guatemala, defamation is a criminal case that carries up to a five-year jail term and a case where, according to the Guatemalan Criminal Code, truth is no defense! Trial on the matter has now been scheduled to begin on August 16. International adoptions from Guatemala cost adoptive parents $15,000 to $25,000 each, and more than 2,300 adoptions were completed in 2001, making babies one of the most successful non-traditional exports from the country. Guatemala, which has no law to regulate adoptions, exports more babies per capita through international adoptions than any other country in the world; sixty percent of the babies go to the U.S. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children reported, after a 1998 visit that "the majority of adoptions from Guatemala are illegal." Concerns about adoptions under coercive circumstances or without adequate parental consent have led our INS to require DNA testing of babies adopted from that country. Harris, who has been defended by the Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala among others, has argued that the Guatemalan Constitution protects freedom of _expression and requires that a "Printers Tribunal" resolve any accusations of defamation. (With a Printers Tribunal, the maximum sentence the judge can impose is six months of house arrest.) But the Guatemalan courts have ruled that Harris does not have freedom of _expression because he is not a journalist and have refused to convene a Printers Tribunal, leaving the case in a criminal court. Several international human rights groups, including the University of Notre Dame Law School, have written amicus briefs for the Guatemalan Constitutional Court supporting Harris¹ legal arguments, but without effect. (The Center for Justice and International Law, which supports victims of human rights violations, has presented the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington. While the Commission has accepted the case against the State of Guatemala for allegedly violating Harris¹ rights of freedom of _expression and equality under the law, both protected by the American Convention on Human Rights, the case may take several years to reach a conclusion.) Harris¹ case tests the freedom of speech of people who speak out publicly against human rights violations. Given Covenant House¹s status as an American NGO, the central role played by our country in the business of international adoptions, and the value we place on freedom of _expression, it is incumbent on the U.S. government to do what it can to protect Bruce Harris, including conveying expressions of official concern to the Guatemalan government and conditioning U.S. aid to that country on compliance with international norms of justice. When truth becomes a casualty of state action, we are all at risk.
For more information contact
info@voicesforfreedom.org
My deepest thanks for your help.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned


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