Part
1
Last year
was a busy one for Guatemala’s criminal justice system.
January 2016
saw the arrests of 18 former military officers for their alleged part
in the country’s dirty war of the 1980s. In February last year, two
ex-soldiers were convicted in an unprecedented wartime sexual slavery
case from the same era.
Such legal
proceedings represent further openings in the judicial system
following the 2013 trial and conviction of former head of state
General Efraín Ríos Montt for genocide and crimes against humanity.
Although the Guatemalan Constitutional Court very quickly annulled
the trial (finally restarted in March after fitful stops and starts,
but currently stalled again), a global precedent has been set for
holding national leaders accountable in the country where their
crimes took place.
And in
November, a Guatemalan judge allowed a separate case against Ríos
Montt to proceed. The case relates to the 1982 massacre in the
village of Dos Erres.
Ríos Montt
was president from 1982 to 1983, a period marked by intense state
violence against the indigenous Mayan peoples. The violence included
the destruction of entire villages, resulting in mass displacement.
Mayans were
repeatedly targeted during the period of repression that lasted from
1954 – when the US engineered a military coup – to 1996. More
than 200,000 people were killed in Guatemala during that period, 83
percent of whom were Mayans.
The crimes
committed by the Guatemalan state were carried out with foreign –
particularly US – assistance. One key party to these crimes has so
far eluded any mention inside the courts: Israel.
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