A top Guatemalan court has sentenced three former paramilitaries to 40 years each in prison after they were found guilty of raping six Indigenous women between 1981 and 1983, one of the bloodiest periods of the Central American nation’s civil war.
The conviction and sentencing on Friday mark another significant step towards attaining justice for the Maya Achi Indigenous women, who were sexually abused by pro-government armed groups, during a period of extreme bloodshed between the military and left-wing rebels that left as many as 200,000 dead or missing.
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Former Civil Self-Defence Patrol members Pedro Sanchez, Simeon Enriquez and Felix Tum were found guilty of crimes against humanity for sexually assaulting six members of the Maya Achi group, Judge Maria Eugenia Castellanos said.
“The women recognised the perpetrators, they recognised the places where the events took place. They were victims of crimes against humanity,” she said, praising the women’s bravery in coming to court to testify on repeated occasions.
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“They are crimes of solitude that stigmatise the woman. It is not easy to speak of them,” the judge said.
Indigenous lawyer Haydee Valey, who represented the women, said the sentence was “historic” because it finally recognised the struggle of civil war survivors who had demanded justice for decades.
Several Maya Achi women in the courtroom applauded at the end of the trial, where some dressed in traditional attire and others listened to the verdict through an interpreter.
One of the victims, a 62-year-old woman, told the AFP news agency she was “very happy” with the verdict.
Pedro Sanchez, one of the three men convicted, told the court before the sentencing, “I am innocent of what they are accusing me of.”
But Judge Marling Mayela Gonzalez Arrivillaga, another member of the all-women, three-panel court, said there was no doubt about the women’s testimony against the suspects.
The convictions were second in the Maya Achi women’s case against former military personnel and paramilitaries. The first trial, which took place in January 2022, saw five former paramilitaries sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Advocacy group Impunity Watch said the case “highlights how the Guatemalan army used sexual violence as a weapon of war against Indigenous women” during the civil conflict.
In 2016, a Guatemalan court sentenced two former military officers for holding 15 women from the Q’eqchi community, who are also of Maya origin, as sex slaves. Both officers were sentenced to a combined 360 years in prison.
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