Arnoldo Xi, land rights activist, disappeared in Purulha in 1995 [1]

On March 23, 1995, Arnoldo Xi, a rights activist and member of National Indigenous and Peasant Coordination (CONIC) and the Committee for the Improvement of Tixila, was shot and wounded in Matucay, Purulha, Baja Verapaz. The incident occurred in front of a companion who reported that after the shooting Xi was dragged into a car by armed men and driven away. Xi had been working with peasants attempting to gain title over land in Tixila, Purulha, that they had been farming for many years. An area landowner was trying to evict the peasant communities. A witness to Xi’s attack claimed that employees of the landowner were in the car with the assailants, and local human rights groups accused the landowner’s private security guards of abducting Xi. According to Amnesty International (AI), private security guards like those suspected of Xi’s disappearance often work with the cooperation of the official security forces. [2]

Two habeas corpus petitions were filed in Xi’s name in 1995, but his whereabouts are still unknown. Despite the existence of witnesses to the abduction and evidence at the scene of the crime, only one man was detained in relation to the disappearance and he was subsequently released. Two arrest warrants were issued in 1996 for employees of the nearby ranches, but they were not detained and no one has been prosecuted for the disappearance.

[1 Main sources: AI, Guatemala: All the truth, justice for all, AMR 34/02/98 (May 1998); Country Reports 1995 to 2001; and UN Commission on Human Rights, Assistance to Guatemala in the field of human rights, E/CN.4/1996/15 (December 1995).
[2] AI Appeal, The “disappearance” of Arnoldo Xi, 1997.

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