Girl, 16, burnt alive by Guatemalan lynch mob.
A 16-year-old girl has been bashed and burnt to death in a public lynching in Guatemala that was captured on video.
The girl was reportedly accused of being part of a group that killed a taxi driver. The film shows her fate at the hands of a large mob in a village in Rio Bravo province. It also reveals the brutality of the lynchings that are routine in the poor, central American country - and throughout the region.
Fairfax Media has chosen not to show the video, but its contents are described below.
At the start of the video, which has been circulated on YouTube, the girl is seen crouched on the ground having sustained severe facial wounds. After standing up in a disoriented manner, she is grabbed by a woman and then attacked by the mob.
The girl is pushed to the ground and then set alight. She writhes on the concrete as the flames grow, eventually getting back on her feet but collapsing to the ground a few second later.
At one point, while she lies still moving her hands and feet, a man walks past and pours a bottle of liquid over her, fanning the flames and creating a circle of fire that repels the onlookers. They shift backwards but continue to watch on as she burns and dies. Bearing witness to the murder is a crowd that appears to number in excess of 100, with more likely to be watching from beyond the camera's sight.
Some stand with hands on their hips, others have their own phones out to record the lynching. Women and children populate the diverse audience.
According to translations of the Guatemalan news site published by other media, the girl had been part of a group that killed 68-year-old taxi driver Enrique González Noriega.
The rest of the group escaped but the girl was captured, beaten and burnt. Police reportedly arrived at the lynching scene later but did not identify the murdered girl. Guatemalan media reported her age as 16.
The incident brings to mind a chilling proverb inspired by the country's pervasive violence - "En Guatemala, la vida no vale nada" - which means, "In Guatemala, life is worth nothing.
In a 2014 report, the US State Department classified Guatemala's violent crime problem as "critical". The country of almost 15 million reported an average of 101 murders a week in 2013 – but actual figures are most likely higher, as the government does not count as homicides cases where the victim left the crime scene alive but died later of their injuries.
The State Department reports that Guatemala's high murder rate is driven by narcotics trafficking, gang-related violence, the ubiquity of firearms (more than 60 per cent of the population have a gun) and a corrupt and incompetent law enforcement system. The country's own data shows that 47 people were murdered in lynchings in 2013, and another 441 were hurt.
Britain's Independent reports that in March this year, two men were lynched in the village of Saquiya by a mob of about 150 who accused the pair of stealing a car. One of the men was burnt while the other was hanged from a tree. Prosecutions for such attacks are rare.
Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs advises travellers to "exercise a high degree of caution" in Guatemala due to the risk of serious criminal violence and local unrest.
Guatemala has also had a
disruptive week in its upper echelons. The attorney-general's office
announced the arrest of central bank chief Julio Suarez, and President
Otto Perez fired several cabinet ministers amid a corruption probe.
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