UPDATE, May 12, 1PM PT: Protests for Rosenberg are taking place at the presidential palace in Guatemala City, and some protesters are streaming video live from their laptops in the streets: BB post link.
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Boing Boing reader “Tricky” in Guatemala says,
I’m writing you this email to let you know about the video testimony of Rodrigo Rosenberg that has been uploaded to YouTube. He was a lawyer in Guatemala City, and he was murdered this past Sunday, May 10. He left this video, taped before he was killed, in which he names his murderers: President Alvaro Colom, his wife and his private secretary.
Part 1 of his posthumous video, and here is part 2. Here is an account in El Periodico, the Guatemalan newspaper that published the story.
The local TV channels are avoiding the story altogether, and have been on a campaign for awhile now trying to discredit the written press. I’ll try to summarize the El Periodico story and his last words.
Rosenberg was the legal representative of two murdered Guatemalans: Khalil Musa and his daughter Marjorie Musa. Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom approached Khalil Musa and asked of him to work in the board of Banrural, one of the state banks in Guatemala. Khalil Musa accepted the job but the government didn’t put him in the post, after three months he told the president that he was resigning to the position he never took, because his good name was being used to say that no more strange transactions were happening within the bank. Musa was murdered. and the police and judicial system didn’t find anything about the murderers, as a matter of fact, they said that it was their own factory workers that murdered them, finally saying in private to members of the family of the murdered Khalil Musa, that it was indeed because of the corruption that was going on at Banrural and that it was their own fault.
Rosenberg filmed and wrote this document, because he didn’t want to shut up.
Now I’m thinking also of why the “state of calamity” was proclaimed here in Guatemala last week, that uses the swine flu outbreak as an excuse, with only 3 confirmed cases. The state’s reaction to only 3 confirmed cases of H1N1 seemed a bit much, but makes more sense when you consider that same “state of calamity” imposes restraint on freedom of the press.
Part 1 is above, Part 2 is below. Here is a related item in English, from the Associated Press. An anonymous BB commenter has kindly translated the document written by Rosenberg for posthumous release, in the comments below.