The Twitterer Jean Anleu Fernández (@jeanfer) Tweeted that people should remove their funds from the Banrural bank, leading to his arrest for "inciting financial panic". The events transpired in Guatemala's capital, Guatemala City, on Tuesday.
The Tweet reads: "The first action people should take is to remove cash from Banrural, and break the banks of corrupt people #escandalogt". Escandalogt is the hashtag used on Tweets related to the assassination of attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg, who posted a YouTube video before his death claiming that the Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom was trying to have him killed. BoingBoing summarizes the events leading up to the arrest:
The Guatemalan bank Banrural is at the center of the country's current political crisis: the recently assassinated attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg represented a finance expert, Khalil Musa, who was said to have refused to participate in corrupt transactions involving that bank. Musa, was assassinated in March. After continuing to make statements about alleged government complicity in that murder, and in the financial crimes Musa protested, Rosenberg was himself shot to death this past Sunday. Days before his murder, Rosenberg recorded a video saying he believed he would soon be assassinated by forces acting at the orders of Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom. After his death, the video spread virally on YouTube, sparking widespread protests on and offline.
Today, Twitter user "Jeanfer" was arrested for suggesting in a tweet that people who had money deposited in Banrural should remove those funds, and by doing so, break the control that corrupt entities have over the state-controlled financial institution.
The move has lead to further unrest in Guatemala, where some Twitter users have taken to retweeting Jeanfer's Tweet. BoingBoing quotes one Tweet stating: "The capture of @jeanfer appears to me to be a smoke curtain to divert attention from the accusations against president Colom."