* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
For 36 years (1960-1996) Guatemala was engaged in a civil war that resulted in the deaths or disappearance of more than 200 000 people, over 80% of which were from Mayan indigenous populations.
The most violent stage of the conflict was the five-year period between 1978 and 1983 under the dictatorships of Generals Romeo Lucas García (1978-1982) and Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983), when 81% of the violations took place. According to research by the Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH, Commission for Historical Clarification) “approximately one out of every four victims of human rights violations and violent incidents were women"[1] and state security personnel and paramilitaries were responsible for 93% of the violations.
On March 19, 2013, the trial against former President Efraín Ríos Montt and former Director of Military Intelligence Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez began - with the first genocide charge in relation to 15 (out of an estimated total of 600) massacres in the Ixil region in Quiché, north of Guatemala, in which 1771 people died, more than 29,000 persons were displaced from their villages and 1485 women were raped by soldiers.
According to Executive Director of Unión Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas (UNAMG) Maya Alvarado, the significance of this trial is huge – not only because one of the accused is a former head of State, but because “the justice system is helping to open debate about racism in Guatemalan society. For many years there has been reluctance to acknowledge that what happened during the armed conflict constitutes genocide. Genocide which has to do with the racism that prevails in Guatemalan society and with the ideological assumptions the State made about indigenous people”.
Alvarado says “the Guatemalan State tried to erase and make people forget after signing the peace treaties in 1996, following 10 years of negotiations between the guerrilla and government. They wanted to turn the page and make a fresh start. But that is not possible. Indigenous people and the victims are demanding that the truth be known”.
While the urban media disparaged the trial by asserting that it will reopen old wounds and polarize society, social, women’s, feminist and human rights organizations in Guatemala see it differently. They believe the trial will not polarize society but rather uncover the truth that has been denied to the staggering number of civil war victims.
Women forced to serve troops and provide ‘entertainment’ – the Sepur Zarco case
The Sepur Zarco community is located in the Polochic river valley where Alvarado says there were “demands for land and indigenous people fought for land claims” since colonial times. During a period of six years during the civil war the function of the ‘Sepur Zarco military detachment’ was to provide entertainment, leisure and rest to military troops.
Alvarado says “In this case, four levels of command were involved, including former President Ríos Montt… Women there were forced to serve the troops - washing the soldiers’ clothes, cooking and feeding them, having to use using their own cleaning products and their corn or bean harvests. The women were also raped.”
15 of these women have decided to take their cases to the trial and tell their stories.
The Sepur Zarco case is framed as sexual violence that constitutes genocide. Alvarado describes investigations that have shown how sexual violence was used as part of the war machinery to divide communities and literally use women to destroy the continuity of indigenous people. “The fact that the women were organized in shifts, provided with contraception to avoid getting pregnant as a result of the rapes and that other crimes had been committed before – like the forced disappearance of their husbands – proves that sexual violence was planned and administratively organized by the military. Women’s bodies were used to send messages of terror to whole communities.”
Alvarado told the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) recently that the UNAMG is “working with 60 women in the region who have been stigmatized in their community, because unlike victims of other crimes - the women are being held responsible for the sexual violence perpetrated against them. This is the reason not all of them wanted to bring their cases to the justice system.”
How the Sepur Zarco case moves forward will depend on what happens at the Ríos Montt trial. The 15 women, who are now quite old, have submitted their testimonies as advanced evidence. One of the women died in January this year.
How will this trialthese cases evolve?
Alvarado says while they value the work of the current Attorney General, and acknowledge that the previous and current administration have made it possible to move forward with these cases, there are still serious difficulties because of parallel powers with vested interests in keeping facts concealed, preventing justice being done: “The Guatemalan State never investigated [the Sepur Zarco] events and much less took them to trial, as it should have done. There have been exhumations that proved the facts, and every time a grave appears, the State should investigate ex-officio but this has not been done. To compound the situation, current President, Otto Pérez Molina, is a former Intelligence Chief of Operations who was also part of the genocide in the Ixil area and other regions.”
In terms of the Ríos Montt trial itself, she believes the two presiding judges – a man and a woman – to be impartial, knowledgeable and committed to justice. “We believe they are handling it in the best possible way, under heavy pressure. We have the best expectations, but we are also ready for anything that might happen. We think lawyers have done a fantastic job and built a solid case; the expert reports are of the highest quality. We think all this should lead to a trial in accordance with the law, resulting in broad condemnation of all the crimes committed and appropriate sentencing.”
She cautions, however, that if this does not happen, they will continue to appeal until justice is served: “social, women’s and human rights organizations believe that justice is necessary for this country to move forward”.
* Just after writing this post we learned of the sentencing of Efraín Ríos Monttto 80 years in prison for the crimes of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. This is indeed the beginning of a long-awaited process of justice for the Ixil people. Democracy Now reported on Monday “The judge in the case has instructed prosecutors to launch an immediate investigation of "all others" connected to the crimes.”This should include Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina who was among those implicated during the trial’s testimony after having served as a regional commander under Ríos Montt’s regime.
To Follow the Trial you can visit: http://www.riosmontt-trial.org/
To Read Testimonies of the April 8th proceedings visit: http://awid.org/News-Analysis/New-Resources2/Rios-Montt-Trial-Testimonies-Report
[1]http://www.edualter.org/material/guatemala/segnovmemoria.htm
Research by Gabriela De Cicco.
*Note that the constitutional court has since annulled the sentence
