Bishop Juan Gerardi (75), an outspoken human rights activist, was murdered late on Sunday, Guatemalan church sources said yesterday. Details of his death were sketchy, but early reports indicated that he was beaten to death by unknown individuals in Guatemala City.
News of his death was confirmed yesterday by members of a UN mission charged with verifying the December 1996 peace agreement between the government and left-wing rebels. Observers said the killing may have been in retaliation for a report that Dr Gerardi compiled on human rights abuses and the human cost of Guatemala's 36-year civil war.
The report says some 150,000 people were killed in the conflict, one of the longest and most brutal in the Americas. Some 50,000 more are still missing, according to the report, and about one million people were displaced by the violence, either leaving the country or hiding in the countrysice.
This impoverished nation of 10 million has one of the most abysmal human rights records in Central America.