A few months ago, 1worldinternational published a feature on the Argentinean Generals who had been made to face justice decades after their involvement in crimes against humanity committed during the darkest period of the country’s history. The same fate has befallen military officers in Guatemala who presided over alleged crimes against humanity and genocide committed mainly against the country’s indigenous Mayan populace.
The UN Truth Commission set up in the aftermath of the country’s 36-year civil war which lasted from 1960 to 1996 estimates that 200,000 people were killed and/or are still missing since the civil war. The country with a population of 13 million and second only to El Salvador as Central America’s most populated country comprises mainly of indigenous Mayan Indians.
During the ‘dark period’, the country’s army was engaged in a war against left-wing guerrillas who comprised mainly of individuals of Mayan origin. As a result, the government endorsed death squads and paramilitaries akin to the Sudanese government’s use of the Janjaweed in Darfur in its attempts to squash the guerrillas and suspected collaborators. In fact the UN backed Commission for Historical Classification also surmised that Guatemalan security forces were behind 93% of all human rights atrocities which took place in that period and that 83% of the victims of the crimes were Mayans.
The worst of the human rights violations including rape, wanton executions and massacres of whole villages are said to have occurred during the rule of Generals Efrain Rios Montt and Oscar Meja Victores between 1970 and 1983. Survivors of the civil war welcomed last week’s conviction of five right-wing paramilitaries (Eusebio Grace, Julian & Maria Acoj, Santos Rosales, Lucas Tecu) and their subsequent sentencing to a total of 7,710 years in jail for their role in a 1982 massacre in the village of Plaza de Sanchez. The sentence is largely symbolic as the maximum term served under Guatemalan law is 50 years. Four of those individuals were members of a government-sponsored militia and the fifth was a former army intelligence officer.
These latest convictions follow the earlier conviction of a former Guatemalan soldier, Pedro Pimentel Rios, who was sentenced to 6,060 years in prison for his role in the massacre of 201 people in the village of Dos Erres during the brutal 36-year civil conflict. Amnesty International, for long a solitary voice in advocating the bringing to justice of the perpetrators of the mass crimes has welcomed the latest convictions. Sebastian Elgueta, Amnesty International’s Central America Researcher, said: “slowly but surely, justice is beginning to prevail for these horrendous crimes that have hung over Guatemalan society for three decades.” He continued “each new verdict erodes the long entrenched impunity in the country and the authorities must continue to ensure that the thousands of victims and their relatives are given access to justice and full reparation as well as the truth about what happened.”
General Efrain Rios Montt for his own part in the civil war faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity following the Guatemalan court’s recent revocation of an amnesty granted to Montt by his successor. General Victores on the other hand was ruled unfit to answer to charges of genocide as a result of a stroke suffered recently. Despotic governments around the world will do well to monitor the developments in Guatemala not least because of the message the recent convictions send to the world, that being that as was also the case in Argentina, justice delayed is not justice denied.
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