Thousands of Women March Against Guatemala's Decision to Annul Military Dictator's Sentence
Waging Nonviolence / By Marta Molina
Thousands of Women March Against Guatemala's Decision to Annul Military Dictator's Sentence
A female-led movement for justice follows the overturning of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt's genocide conviction.
June 7, 2013 |
Two weeks ago, Guatemalas Constitutional Court overturned the historic guilty verdict of the nations former military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who had been convicted of committing genocide and crimes against humanity during his short reign from 1982 to 1983. The Constitutional Courts decision annulled Montts 80-year prison sentence and ordered that the final weeks of the case be retried. At 86 years old, Ríos Montt was the first former head of state in Latin America to be sentenced for genocide by his own country.
In response, human rights organizations across Latin America organized actions protesting the sentence annulment, supporting the victims of genocide and condemning legal impunity. In Guatemala, an estimated 5,000 people marched through the capital on May 24. Simultaneous actions occurred in front of the Guatemalan embassies in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Mexico City, Mexico; Managua, Nicaragua; Lima, Peru; Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula in Honduras. Additional protests occurred in El Salvador and Costa Rica.
Competing interests
David Oliva, a member of the human rights organization HIJOS Guatemala, said that the march in Guatemala was the biggest mobilization he has seen around the issue of memory and unmasking impunity in the justice system.
Today there are more people out than the day that Guatemala mobilized to protest the assassination of Monseñor Gerardi, he said, referring to the Guatemalan bishop and human rights defender who was murdered two days after the 1998 publication of the groundbreaking report Guatemala: Never Again. The report compiled hundreds of testimonies about crimes committed during the nations protracted civil war and genocide against indigenous communities, and it laid the groundwork for Montts subsequent trial.
At the march, human rights activists who had spent years organizing for Montts trial asserted that the ruling and sentence was still valid.
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