Palacio Nacional

On June 30, 1982, Ríos Montt, in a speech called "We are willing to let honesty and justice reign" ("Estamos dispuestos q que reine la honestidad y la justicia"), told the Guatemalan people that the government had realized that there were many Guatemalans that were afraid of being killed and that therefore did not apply for the amnesty his government issued in late March. Because of that, he said, the government was going to fight communist guerrillas by any means they wanted, but that they also were going to use open trials. Rios Montt said that in order to accomplish that he had set up "special jurisdiction tribunals" which would judge leftist criminals and that they were going to apply capital punishment to those proven guilty.[2]