Roman Gressier writes in El Faro English on the allegations of historical illegal adoptions and the alleged role of a high-ranking official in Guatemala, namely the current Attorney General, Consuelo Porras. It appears that a record of the position in which she signed off on them is absent from her re-election portfolio.
Information recently submitted to a United Nations group of experts implicates Guatemala’s Attorney General, Consuelo Porras, in at least 80 “allegations of illegal adoptions” committed by the State between 1968 and 1996.
In 40 percent of these cases, the children’s identities were altered. El Faro had access to eight of them, involving nine children placed for adoption between January and August 1982.
Documents in the newspaper’s possession show that Consuelo Porras was involved in irregular adoptions not only of Guatemalan children —most of them Indigenous— but also of children of mothers from El Salvador and Honduras.
At the time, Porras worked at the Presidential Secretariat of Social Welfare. Adoption documents obtained by El Faro identify her between January and August 1982 as the administrator of Hogar Elisa Martínez (HEM), a facility which was part of the national adoption program.
In a statement issued on February 16, the experts said they were “alarmed by allegations of historical illegal adoptions and the alleged role of a high-ranking official in Guatemala,” naming Porras specifically.
That same day, the attorney general ran for the Constitutional Court, where she served as an alternate justice from 2016 to 2018.
“The experts noted that a judicial appointment process is currently underway and urged all parties to exercise caution in light of these serious allegations, which have not yet been investigated,” adds a statement on the website of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The group includes five United Nations special rapporteurs, with mandates ranging from judicial independence to human trafficking and violence against women and children. It also includes three representatives from the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.
You can read the full piece, with links, here, Consuelo Porras Signed Irregular Adoptions of Children from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras.
Categories: Corruption, Genocide, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Poverty, Racism, Report, Solidarity in Action, Violence
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