E/CN.A/1990/17 page 57 time. The Special Rapporteur was able to talk privately with Juan Carlos Tejeda Tortola, on behalf of whom an urgent appeal had been sent to the Government. 176. The Special Rapporteur wishes to express his sincere appreciation and gratitude to the Guatemalan authorities for the preparation of his visit, and in particular to Mrs. Aracely Phenfunchal and Mr. Luis Alfredo Dardon Gutierrez of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for the efficient and kind way in which they contributed to the organization of the visit. 2. Background and legal and institutional framework 177. The Special Rapporteur's visit to Guatemala coincided with a particularly dramatic upsurge of violence throughout the country. On 1 August, Danilo Barrillas, a prominent member of the ruling Christian Democrat Party and President Cerezo'e special appointee to the short-lived peace talks held in October 1987 in Madrid with the guerrilla movement Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, was killed by a death-squad on the street. On 15 August a bomb attack hit the offices of the most important Guatemala-based non-governmental human rights organization Mutual Support Group (GAM) and of the International Peace Brigades (an organization which lends support to people who have received death threats). On 17 August a military patrol .killed nine members of a civilian defence patrol and wounded three in the department of Alta Verapaz, reportedly because they had been mistaken for guerrillas. In the week of 21 August seven leading members of the University Student Association (AEU) were kidnapped; the bodies of four of them were found during the second and third weeks of September, bearing marks of torture and severely mutilated. On 24 August the President of the Banco Industrial, Ramiro Castillo, was killed in front of his house by Bix gunmen. Kidnappings and arbitrary executions continued to take place during the weeks preceding the Special Rapporteur's visit. 178. After having been under military rule for a considerable period, Guatemala has a civilian government since January 1986. The new Government under President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo committed itself to restore the rule of law in the country. During the first few years of the present administration there wa6 a noticeable improvement in the human rights situation, although reports about disappearances and extrajudicial killings, which had been occurring on a wide scale during the first half of the 1980s, continued to come in. It was, however, in particular after an unsuccessful £O_up attempt on 11 May 1988 that the human rights situation deteriorated rapidly; many people involved in the political process received death threats and the number of bombings, kidnappings and extra-legal executions increased considerably. Another unsuccessful coup attempt took place on 9 May 1989. The Special Rapporteur was told that this event had again unleashed a wave of violence, reaching its peak in August. Since the beginning of the year a number of death-squads have made known their existence and have made death threats against a wide range of persons. All this has contributed to an atmosphere of fear in the country which could not but deeply impress itself on the Special Rapporteur. 179. The human rights situation in Guatemala is different from that in many other countries where human rights are violated on a wide scale. In Guatemala the Government is not so much accused of committing human rights violations directly as of failing to guarantee to its citizens the full enjoyment of