On Saturday early morning, unknown people broke into the offices of the two organizations and took hard discs from the coordinators, but they did not take other materials nor any money, so this is not a conventional robbery.

The organizations support the processes against mining and in defense of the territories under threat in several Guatemalan regions, so they have been subject to threats to their safety, but special police protection was denied by the authorities.

“It strongly calls our attention that the ’thieves’ only stole computers from coordinators offices. Both incidents lead us to think that this is a political intimidatory act”, say REDSAG and CEIBA in an international press release.

Mario Godinez of CEIBA told Real World Radio that in the incident against the organization there are clear signs of participation of “professionals” in order to intimidate and send a “warning” to the organization that for over a decade has been a center for the coordination of community resistance to displacement projects and against projects that violate human rights.

Godinez illustrated the incident saying that only two weeks before the incident there was a community consultation in a municipality of small farmers and fisherfolk (Champerico Retalhuleu) where nearly 17,000 people rejected metal mining.

He also mentioned the existence of “parallel power groups” in Guatemala that have become more prominent after President General Otto Perez Molina came in office. “Many members of the mafia, counter-insurgent war military are back in power now, while they had been leading groups linked with kidnapping or drug trafficking. In the previous administrations they had not exactly left us alone, but they had not attacked us so directly. Today they went against the core of the organization, its head office. There groups have watched us closely for a long time and this was all performed in a professional way. There are no signs that the robbery was done by a ’crook’ since they only took information”, said Godinez.

The member of CEIBA said the organization will be inactive for a while as a result of the incident, while he said this is a warning in order to reorganize the State’s intelligence schemes in an atmosphere of growing impunity for the violent groups linked with the military forces and economic interests.