Rape sentences in landmark Guatemala trial

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

A court in Guatemala has sentenced two former members of the military to 360 years in jail for human rights abuses.

Francisco Reyes Giron, was the former commander of the Sepur Zarco military base and Heriberto Valdez Asij, a military commissioner.

They were charged with sexual enslavement, rape and murder of a group of indigenous women.

It is the first successful prosecution for sexual violence during Guatemala's armed conflict.

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]


Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-35674893

---

27 February 2016 Latin America & Caribbean

[Judi Lynn]

1. They actually found high-ranking officials guilty. It couldn't have happened any earlier,

due to savage hatred of the original people, the Maya. This hatred is probably the backside of their denied sense of guilt for their elders' filthy mistreatment and criminal acts against the forefathers of the modern Maya.

More from the BBC article posted above:

The retired officer, Francisco Reyes Giron, was found guilty of holding 15 women in sexual and domestic slavery and for killing one woman and her two daughters.

Heriberto Valdez Asij, a civilian who carried out military commissions, was convicted for the same enslavement, as well as the forced disappearance of seven men.

The court had heard harrowing details about what went on at the former Sepur Zarco military base in the eastern highlands during the 1980s.

According to the prosecution, in 1982 armed forces repeatedly attacked the village of Sepur Zarco and killed or took away Mayan Quiche leaders who had been applying for land titles and had angered local landowners.

[center]

Francisco Reyes Giron



Heriberto Valdez Asij

[/center]

[MisterP]

3. if you want to build a whole new society like Arana and Romero Garcia and Rios Montt

any actual people come second (if that)

nada tras las ojos y nada dentro el eniforme

[Judi Lynn]

4. Such monsters. They don't seem even possible. They really don't look human.

Guess it's easy, if you are the right color, and wealthy, to suck up all the air in a small country and control everything you see in every direction.

It's good to imagine they do pay heavily, somewhere, after they disappear.

[MisterP]

5. Rios's closest analogue is Pol Pot, perhaps

though Rios also justified himself as a reformer after 1974 was stolen from him; he calmed down the paramils--and insteasd murdered villages with the utmost training and professionalism

[Judi Lynn]

6. He was deadly when he got underway, and he still had time to be a fundamentalist preacher.

Praise the lord.

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Testimony Through the Graves of Guatemala

 06/04/2014 01:09 pm ET | Updated Aug 03, 2014

On June 2, 1982, armed members of the Guatemalan military walked into the village of Pambach. They separated men from the women and children, then took about 80 men from the village down into the valley. They told the women that the men were being conscripted to serve in the military and would be back in two years.

Later that day, the same group of men were taken to a forest near the town of Tactic where they were butchered -- bludgeoned, beaten, stabbed -- and left as a carpet of corpses on the forest floor.

The next day, the military returned with trucks and moved 84 corpses to Military Zone 21 military base. Unknown to them, one man had survived the massacre despite near fatal wounds. He eventually made his way back to Pambach and broke the news to the women that they would never see their menfolk again. And indeed they never did. They were the latest "disappeared."

The old military base still exists today. It is now a U.N. Peacekeepers training base, run by the Guatemalan military. It is also home to 533 corpses of Guatemalan "disappeared" who did not in fact disappear. They were murdered in cold blood then buried at the base away from prying eyes, but now the evidence is speaking from the grave.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-d-smith/testimony-through-the-gra_b_5441536.html

[duhneece]

2. Good news for women all over the world

A significant step.

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. excellent