New anti-corruption marches take place in Guatemala

Guatemala City, August 11 (RHC)-- Social, student and peasant organizations in Guatemala are calling for another day of marches and protests against corruption and criminalization in the Central American country, the second this week.

According to a joint communiqué, the Historic Center of the capital, Guatemala City, is the center of convergence for the meeting and mobilizations calling for an end to the complicity of the State with corruption and a way out of the economic crisis worsened under the mandate of Alejandro Giammattei.

A "pact of Corrupts has managed to consolidate the capture of the State, to the point of flagrantly violating the fundamental rights of our peoples and of anyone who opposes corruption", declares the collective call.

The demonstrators denounced the business with the COVID-19 vaccines, the bad management of the pandemic, the bad work, the increase of poverty, the high cost of living and the low salaries.

According to the document, those mobilized are demanding serious and objective economic actions to stabilize the cost of the basic food basket, the resignation of Walter Mazariegos as rector and the repetition of the electoral process at the University of San Carlos.

Students from the University of San Carlos, the Social and Popular Assembly (ASP), Convergencia Nacional Maya Waqib' Kej, Acción Ciudadana, JusticiaYa and the Comité de Desarrollo Campesino (Codeca) will also demand an end to the criminalization of journalists, judges and human rights defenders, as in the case of the imprisonment of José Rubén Zamora, director of elPeriódico, who was accused of alleged money laundering due to his critical stance against the government.

"Censorship against the press and freedom of expression are characteristics that describe the authoritarianism and dictatorship of your government," the social movements rebuke President Giammattei.

"If we keep quiet and do not protest we lose everything," they said last Monday when they took to the streets with similar demands, while blocking important stretches of highways across the nation.