With delay but for the record:
On 12 December 2025, the government of Guatemala formally acknowledged responsibility for the 1989 enforced disappearance of human rights defenders Agapito Pérez Lucas, Nicolás Mateo, Macario Pú Chivalán, and Luis Ruiz Luis, whose whereabouts remain unknown to this day. President Bernardo Arévalo will join the victims’ families, representatives from the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center (Kennedy Human Rights) and Consejo de Comunidades Étnicas Runujel Junam (CERJ), state officials, and special guests for a public Act of Recognition of Responsibility ceremony at the Palacio de la Cultura in Guatemala City.
Pérez Lucas, Mateo, Pú Chivalán, and Ruiz Luis were active members of CERJ during the armed conflict in Guatemala, helping protect rural Guatemalans from unlawful conscription into the army. Targeted for their human rights work, the four defenders were subjected to threats and persecution, which ultimately culminated in their arbitrary detention and forced disappearance by members of the Guatemalan Army. Despite repeated pleas from their families, the Guatemalan government failed to conduct an effective investigation or provide information about their whereabouts.
“For decades, the families of the disappeared lived with silence, fear, and impunity,” said Kerry Kennedy, president of Kennedy Human Rights. “The State’s failure to investigate and respond not only deepened the pain of those who lost loved ones, but it denied entire communities the right to truth, justice, and memory. This public recognition of responsibility is therefore not simply a symbolic act. It is the State’s formal acknowledgment, before its people and before the world, of the grave human rights violations committed against these communities.”
In September 2024, after years of litigation by CERJ and Kennedy Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) concluded that the Guatemalan government was responsible for forcibly disappearing the four defenders in direct retaliation for their human rights work, failing to search for the defenders’ whereabouts, and failing to investigate the facts. As part of its verdict, the Court ordered Guatemala to uphold several reparation measures in favor of the victims, including a thorough investigation of the disappearances. The Court also ordered the Guatemalan government to implement a series of non-repetition measures, including declassifying archives related to the internal armed conflict and creating a national mechanism to search for forcibly disappeared individuals. It also ordered the State to adopt a public policy to protect human rights defenders. In response to this Court order, the Government recently announced the adoption of such a policy for the period 2025-2035.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 