The trial against soldiers who committed sexual violence against indigenous women during the civil war in Guatemala is over. They are guilty.
The supreme court of Guatemala has found Colonel Esteelmer Reyes Girón and former army commissioner Heriberto Veldez Asig guilty of sexual violence and domestic slavery against the Q'echi women of the community of Sepur Zarco, in eastern Guatemala. The two men were sentenced to 120 and 240 years in prison respectively. The sentence includes thirty years in prison for both for crimes against humanity, an important step towards the recognition of gender-based violence. It is the first time that sexual violence committed during the civil war that devastated the country between 1960 and 1996 has been officially prosecuted and punished as a crime, and the first time that the supreme court has ruled on cases of sexual and domestic slavery.
The case was formally filed in September 2011 and a year later the court proceeded with preliminary hearings, during which the testimonies and statements of fifteen Q'echi women and five Q'echi men who witnessed the events were examined. One of the victims died a few months after giving her testimony. The trial began on 1 February 2016 and could be followed live on the internet.
In addition to imprisonment, the convicted men must pay compensation to the victims. Veldez Asig and Reyes Girón must pay 250,000 quetzals (approximately 30,000 euros) and 500,000 quetzals (approximately 60,000 euros) respectively to each victim, for a total of more than 1 million euros, according to Reuters.
"We find that the treatment of the women of Sepur Zarco was humiliating and degrading," said Judge Yasmin Barrios when the court's verdict was pronounced. The serial rapes and other acts of violence at the heart of the trial were not only recognised as gender crimes, but also as "a moral and physical attack against the community," Barrios continued. "Guatemala demonstrates that sexual abuse in wartime cannot be attributed to machismo; it is a weapon of war that must be punished," commented Jo-Marie Burt, an observer from the Washington Office for Latin America, on Twitter.
The violence against Guatemalan women began in 1981 when fifteen farmers from Izabal and Alta Verapaz were arrested without explanation and disappeared at the hands of the army, in the midst of the civil war. The sole "fault" of these men was having sought to exercise their right to ownership of the land they farmed. To date, the remains of only two of the farmers have been found.
After the arrest of the farmers, the army returned to the village. Entire crops and houses were burned, while everything else was destroyed or looted. The armed forces then established a military base near Sepur Zarco and forced the wives of the disappeared farmers to carry out domestic work inside the military camp. They were compelled to work "shifts" of twelve hours during which they were regularly raped. The abuse ended when the camp was closed in 1988, as explained by Gabriela Rivera, a lawyer for Mujeres Transformando el Mundo (Mtm – Women Transforming the World), the organisation that brought these atrocities to light.
Four of the fifteen women managed to escape by hiding in the mountains for years. They lived in poverty, in fear that the military might find them. Their children were malnourished and suffered from various illnesses and psychological disorders. "One of the women fled with her four children, and returned six years later with only one of them. Another fled with three children, and returned alone," Rivera stated.
In 2009, the Mtm association began to tell the story of what the Q'echi' women had suffered. A year later, their story and that of other women who had experienced violence were heard at the Court of conscience on sexual violence against women, an event created within the framework of the International commission against impunity in Guatemala (International commission against impunity in Guatemala), which aims to bring to light the untold crimes of the civil war. It was the first time Guatemalan women were able to recount the abuses they had suffered in the past and be heard.
The two military men were arrested in June 2014. Reyes Girón was charged with crimes against humanity for sexual violence and sexual and domestic slavery, and for the murder of Dominga Coc and her two daughters. Valdéz Asij was charged with crimes against humanity for sexual violence and for the forced disappearance of persons.
"It is essential that the truth of the victims of violence be recognised as such at a legal level too. Guatemala will only be able to redeem itself when it brings sexual violence to trial as crimes that violate the human conscience," commented Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú.
The trial on sexual slavery in Guatemala has attracted the attention of the international community, because it represents an important step towards state accountability, now that the civil war is over. It is also a significant commitment to bringing justice to one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the western hemisphere. Furthermore, it directly addresses the issue of ethnic discrimination and gender inequality, fundamental questions given that more than 80 per cent of the 200,000 victims of the armed conflict were of Maya ethnic origin.
Translated by Camilla Soldati
