Died: February 19, 2021. DIANNA Ortiz, who has died of cancer aged 62, was an American Roman Catholic nun who went to Guatemala as a missionary during a decade of US-backed wars in Central America – and went through a shocking ordeal that made headlines around the world. In 1989, she was abducted by a Guatemalan security force, whose members gang-raped and tortured her for 24 hours. Her back was pockmarked with more than 100 cigarette burns and she later had a termination after discovering that the attack had left her pregnant. She was also dangled over a pit of corpses – “some decapitated, all caked with blood,” she recalled – and forced to kill another woman with a macheté.
Prevent transfers of equipment inappropriate for local policing, such as military weapons, long-range acoustic devices, grenade launchers, weaponized drones, armored military vehicles, and grenades or similar explosives.
Require that recipients certify that they can account for all military weapons and equipment. In 2012, the weapons portion of the 1033 program was temporarily suspended after DOD found that a local sheriff gifted out army-surplus Humvees and other supplies. This bill would prohibit re-gifting and require recipients to account for all DOD weapons and equipment.
The bill adds requirements to enforce tracking mechanisms that keep up with and control transfers of the equipment, implements policies ensuring that police agencies can’t surplus the equipment for resale, and defines drones more clearly.
Ursuline Sr. Dianna Ortiz (Courtesy of the Ursuline Sisters of Mount St. Joseph)
Sr. Dianna Ortiz, who not only survived kidnapping and torture but used the experience to become a voice for torture victims everywhere, died of cancer Feb. 19. She was 62.
An Ursuline Sister of Mount St. Joseph, Kentucky, Ortiz was working as a missionary in Guatemala in 1989 when she was kidnapped by Guatemalan security forces because of her work with Indigenous people. She was taken to a secret detention center in the capital and tortured for 24 hours until she was able to escape.
She returned to her family in the United States but was so traumatized, she had no memory of her life before the abduction and was unable to recall family members or her Ursuline sisters. She spent years pursuing justice, but no one was ever charged, and her memory never fully returned.
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Sr. Ortiz: Torture victim to peacemaker
Sr. Ortiz: Torture victim to peacemaker By
Dennis Sadowski, Catholic News Service February 26, 2021
CLEVELAND Ursuline Sr. Dianna Ortiz was teaching Indigenous children as a missionary in Guatemala in 1989 when her ministry was torn apart in the midst of the country’s brutal civil war.
Guatemalan soldiers abducted her from a garden Nov. 2, detaining her for 30 hours. She reported being gang raped and tortured repeatedly until she escaped.
Returning to the United States, Sr. Ortiz became a human rights advocate and peacemaker, starting an organization for torture survivors and becoming a visible presence of nonviolence at vigils and marches in the nation’s capital.