Source:
BoingBoingGuatemala: Protests for Assasinated Lawyer Streamed Live from Laptops in the Streets
Posted by Xeni Jardin,
Protests are taking place today in Guatemala City to demand justice for an attorney who was assassinated on Sunday, and who claimed in a posthumously released YouTube video taped before his death that if he were to die, it would be at the orders of Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom.
Quick background: The slain attorney, Rodrigo Rosenberg represented a man who refused to take an assigment by Guatemala's president to serve on the board of a bank widely known as a money laundering hub and a shelter for narcotrafficking spoils. This whistleblower client of Rosenberg, Khalil Musa, was assassinated in March. Las Sunday, after reportedly refusing to participate in the corruption and the coverup, Rosenberg was assasinated, too.
Protesters are at the presidential palace today. At least one citizen media activist is streaming the action on Ustream.tv, as I type, though the stream is going on and off as police clusters form. Twitter users are marking conversations about today's protests, and about the case in general, with the hashtag #escandalogt. To take this sort of public action in Guatemala is not something one does lightly, and the young people at the center of these protests are placing their lives at risk.
I'm seeing some Guatemalan Twitterers spreading word that "chicken bus" drivers will gather tomorrow in the capital for another round of protests. Why? These same transportistas have long been the target of ongoing, ever-escalating assasinations and extortion from narco gangs. The corruption Rosenberg and Musa attempted to expose fuels this violence.
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Read more:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/12/guatemala-protests-f.html
Note that this story also gets into the narco money-laundering "service" provided by banks, as well...