Embassy siege

Press, 14 May 1982, Page 6

Embassy siege

NZPA-ReuterGuatemala City

About 20 Guatemalan peasants and Leftist militants occupied the Brazilian Embassy in Guatemala City yesterday and seized about 10 hostages, including the Brazilian Ambassador. The police said it was not clear whether the militants were armed. Two of the hostages were later released. The pair, turned over to members of the Guatemalan Red Cross whom the guerrillas had allowed into the embassy, were the Ambassador’s Brazilian secretary and a Guatemalan policeman. They were taken away in an ambulance. Using loudspeakers, the militants said the occupation was to publicise the plight of the Guatemalan poor who were being massacred by the authorities.

The police said that apart from Mr Abreu e Silva and members of his staff the hostages included the former Guatemalan Agriculture Minister, Francisco Bobadilla, who sought asylum in the embassy after a military coup in March. Ponce and army units surrounded the embassy, in an office block in the southern section of the city. "We have occupied the embassy peacefully and we don’t want the authorities to intervene,” one young man said through a loudspeaker. “We don’t want a massacre like that of the Spanish Embassy.” Thirty-nine people were killed in the Spanish Embassy in 1980 after a fire broke out when the police stormed the building, which had been taken over oy peasants.