NEWS FEATURE: Tortured nun begins hunger strike

c. 1996 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS)-Sister Dianna Ortiz began a bread-and-water fast Monday to pressure the Clinton administration to release information about possible U.S. government involvement in her 1989 abduction, rape and torture in Guatemala. Sitting through cold, rainy nights in a makeshift encampment in front of the White House, the Roman Catholic nun […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)-Sister Dianna Ortiz began a bread-and-water fast Monday to pressure the Clinton administration to release information about possible U.S. government involvement in her 1989 abduction, rape and torture in Guatemala.

Sitting through cold, rainy nights in a makeshift encampment in front of the White House, the Roman Catholic nun has been a compelling figure during the first three weeks of her vigil to force the administration to tell her what it knows about her ordeal.


Now, she said, “I dare to place my life in the hands of the U.S. government.”

The White House has made dramatic shows of support for Ortiz, all the more striking given her suggestion of U.S. complicity in her torture. In the midst of turmoil in China and North Korea, White House National Security Adviser Anthony Lake stopped by Ortiz’s encampment three times in the late-evening hours to check on her welfare. And first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton invited her to the White House, where she promised to help her obtain information about her case.

But the administration faces two problems in the release of information about Ortiz-possible embarrassment to the CIA in Central America and damage to the agency’s ability to gather intelligence.

Nancy Soderberg, White House deputy national security adviser, says that the administration “has a great deal of sympathy for (Ortiz’s) frustration, and we are trying to get the information to her as fast as we can.”

Any U.S. involvement in criminal activity, she said, “didn’t happen under our watch. We have nothing to hide. But we want to release the information in a way that is responsible. It requires our review to insure no damage to others involved, and (to protect) sources and methods (of intelligence gathering). It takes time.”

Ortiz appreciates the support, she told reporters at a National Press Club press conference, but she wants the government immediately to declassify documents relating to her case and the “hundreds of thousands of people in Guatemala who have lost loved ones to torture and murder.”

It is the U.S. government, she said, that “controls information about the events that haunt me and (that) could ensure that … my Guatemalan torturers will never torture again and that no one in Guatemala will ever have to live this hell.”


For more than six years, Ortiz said, she has waited for information pertaining to her case. “I have attended meeting after meeting and each month I have expected the results of the Intelligence Oversight Board investigation, which was supposed to be concluded last July. I have filed Freedom of Information requests and I still do not have any documents. If I am in the park, it is because I need the truth and my options have been gradually eliminated.”

Anna Gallagher, Ortiz’ lawyer, worries that the administration may fail to produce documents about U.S. involvement to avoid implicating the CIA. “I think the government is going to give Dianna some information, but I don’t know how much. I tell her to hope for the best and expect the worst. The State Department has said it will voluntarily disclose documents soon, but I don’t think that means classified information.”

Ortiz, of Grants, N.M., is an Ursuline nun. She moved from the Ursuline convent in Maple Mount, Ky., in 1987 to teach Mayan children in the highlands of Guatemala. Two years later, she began receiving death threats for reasons still unknown. And in November 1989, armed assailants abducted her from a convent in Antigua and took her to a clandestine prison.

For 24 hours she said she was raped repeatedly, burned 111 times with cigarettes, and lowered into a pit filed with dismembered corpses. She recently revealed publicly what she had told only close friends and investigators: Her assailants, holding their hands over hers, forced her to stab another woman prisoner to death with a machete.

Being forced to torture another person is a common strategy, says Mary Fabri, a psychologist in Chicago at The Marjorie Kovler Center for the Treatment of Survivors of Torture, where Ortiz sought treatment. “It makes the tortured feel like the torturer and helps ensure silence.”

Later, Ortiz said, a tall, fair-skinned man who spoke broken Spanish with a North American accent-whom the assailants called “boss” and “Alejandro,”-arrived at the prison and ordered the men to stop. Ortiz is a North American, he said, and her disappearance had become public. He told Ortiz a mistake had been made, and he said he would drive Ortiz to the U.S. embassy to get help, but she fled from the vehicle before she arrived. It is that man who Ortiz believes may have worked for the U.S. government because her torturers took orders from him.


Ortiz’s case received little attention until March 1995, when Rep. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., told American lawyer Jennifer Harbury that a Guatemalan intelligence officer on the CIA payroll ordered the killing of her husband, guerrilla leader Efrain Bamaca, as well as a North American innkeeper.

President Clinton told the Intelligence Oversight Board to conduct a governmentwide inquiry to find out what the CIA and other federal agencies knew about those cases and others, including Ortiz’s. The U.S. District Attorney’s Office in Washington is investigating Ortiz’s abduction.

Gallagher believes the Clinton administration is sincere in its support of Ortiz, in contrast to Bush-appointee Thomas Stroock, the former U.S. ambassador to Guatemala, who has publicly challenged Ortiz’s account of her abduction, particularly regarding”Alejandro.”At the time of the incident, Guatemalan officials accused Ortiz of staging her own kidnapping and said her burns were the result of a sadomasochistic lesbian tryst-rumors Ortiz supporters believe originated with U.S. embassy officials, who deny the charges.

Soderberg has said that the administration “has absolutely no reason not to believe” Ortiz. But Gallagher remains critical of the government’s treatment of her client. In six years, she said, the only U.S. official to “say that Dianna is actually telling the truth is Nancy Soderberg. That’s outrageous given that earlier the government conducted a smear campaign against Dianna.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Both the administration and the Intelligence Oversight Board, Gallagher contends, “seem moved by Dianna’s case and they want to help. But our relationship with the Department of Justice is tenuous at best. I get the feeling they don’t believe her entire story. We asked the Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Tubach if he believed Dianna. He said he believed something terribly traumatic had happened, but his job was to fill in the holes.”

The Department of Justice will not comment on ongoing investigations.

While she waits for the government to release information, Ortiz spends her nights wrapped in sleeping bags in Lafayette Park.


“It’s incredibly hard for her because she can’t sleep,” says Pat Davis, a spokesman for the Guatemala Human Rights Commission. “Many nights she’s been cold and wet which means she’s been chilled all day. Her muscles are tight and her bones are bruised. It’s also difficult because she doesn’t have a room she can go to. When tourists treat her like a public spectacle and gawk at her, she can’t go inside and shut the door.”

More difficult to endure, Ortiz said, are the memories triggered by the sights and sounds of the park. “The sight of a uniformed police officer … reminds me of the policeman who raped and tortured me. The smell of cigarettes reminds me of the cigarettes used to brand my body.”

She has lost 10 pounds during the first three weeks of her vigil. Still, Ortiz has been buoyed by a steady stream of supporters, from her Ursuline sisters to a group of homeless men in Lafayette Park, who have given her blankets and flowers and kept an eye on her encampment late at night.

“She’s such a soft person inside and that is why I feel sad for her,” says a man called “Chief,” who sleeps in the park. “But even the inclement weather hasn’t dampened her will. If anything, she’s getting stronger.”

Ortiz says that she is not just seeking documents for herself but for “all those Guatemalans who have suffered and died at the hands of officially sponsored death squads for years supported with United States tax dollars.” Since January, she said, 27 people have been tortured in Guatemala; 81 have been murdered for political reasons.

Speaking publicly about human-rights abuses, her colleagues at the Guatemala commission say, is a privilege shared by few Guatemalans.


“In Guatemala, if you speak up, you put your life in danger,” says Marta Ixcot, 23, a Guatemalan whose family fled the country in 1984.“I’m still a refugee and people will not pay attention to me. It hurts me to see Dianna in pain, but I’m happy that someone is hearing her story.”

MJP END LIEBLICH

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