Attorneys for the six victims say ‘historic’ court docket resolution recognises the plight of survivors who demanded justice for many years.
A prime Guatemalan court docket has sentenced three former paramilitaries to 40 years every in jail after they had been discovered responsible of raping six Indigenous ladies between 1981 and 1983, one of many bloodiest durations of the Central American nation’s civil war.
The conviction and sentencing on Friday mark one other important step in the direction of attaining justice for the Maya Achi Indigenous ladies, who had been sexually abused by pro-government armed teams, throughout a interval of maximum bloodshed between the navy and left-wing rebels that left as many as 200,000 lifeless or lacking.
Former Civil Self-Defence Patrol members Pedro Sanchez, Simeon Enriquez and Felix Tum had been discovered responsible of crimes towards humanity for sexually assaulting six members of the Maya Achi group, Decide Maria Eugenia Castellanos mentioned.
“The ladies recognised the perpetrators, they recognised the locations the place the occasions occurred. They had been victims of crimes towards humanity,” she mentioned, praising the ladies’s bravery in coming to court docket to testify on repeated events.
“They’re crimes of solitude that stigmatise the lady. It isn’t straightforward to talk of them,” the decide mentioned.
Indigenous lawyer Haydee Valey, who represented the ladies, mentioned the sentence was “historic” as a result of it lastly recognised the wrestle of civil conflict survivors who had demanded justice for decades.
A number of Maya Achi ladies within the courtroom applauded on the finish of the trial, the place some wearing conventional apparel and others listened to the decision by means of an interpreter.
One of many victims, a 62-year-old girl, instructed the AFP information company she was “very pleased” with the decision.
Pedro Sanchez, one of many three males convicted, instructed the court docket earlier than the sentencing, “I’m harmless of what they’re accusing me of.”
However Decide Marling Mayela Gonzalez Arrivillaga, one other member of the all-women, three-panel court docket, mentioned there was little doubt concerning the ladies’s testimony towards the suspects.
The convictions had been second within the Maya Achi ladies’s case towards former navy personnel and paramilitaries. The primary trial, which occurred in January 2022, noticed 5 former paramilitaries sentenced to 30 years in jail.
Advocacy group Impunity Watch mentioned the case “highlights how the Guatemalan military used sexual violence as a weapon of conflict towards Indigenous ladies” throughout the civil conflict.
In 2016, a Guatemalan court docket sentenced two former navy officers for holding 15 ladies from the Q’eqchi neighborhood, who’re additionally of Maya origin, as intercourse slaves. Each officers had been sentenced to a mixed 360 years in jail.