Guatemala Metropolis – Survivors of genocide and different crimes in opposition to humanity throughout Guatemala’s civil battle are calling for justice as pending trials in opposition to ex-military officers stagnate in court docket.
Indigenous survivors and family members of victims marched on Thursday in Guatemala Metropolis to commemorate the Nationwide Day of Dignity for Victims of the Inner Armed Battle, demanding the federal government uphold its commitments to peace and justice.
“Today carries a lot which means. It honours our useless,” stated Rigoberta Menchu, an Indigenous Maya Ok’iche human rights activist and winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize.
“For a lot of, a few years we’ve struggled for the popularity of victims,” Menchu, whose father was killed in a 1980 bloodbath, advised Al Jazeera.
A civil battle between socialist guerrilla forces and the Guatemalan navy from 1960 to 1996 left an estimated 200,000 folks useless and one other 45,000 folks disappeared. Greater than 80 % of victims had been Indigenous Maya civilians.
Army forces had been liable for 93 % of killings, in accordance with a United Nations-backed reality fee. The Fee for Historic Clarification decided state actors dedicated acts of genocide, and Guatemalan courts have since come to the identical conclusion.
The fee offered its report on February 25, 1999, and the date was later recognised because the annual day of dignity for victims. The report helped pave the way in which for investigations and exhumations that led to the prosecution of high-level former navy officers.
Over the previous decade, home Guatemalan courts have issued landmark rulings on genocide, sexual slavery and different crimes in opposition to humanity. However pending circumstances and trials for genocide, mass enforced disappearances and different civil war-era atrocities are stagnating within the courts.
“Little by little they need to shut down all of the circumstances,” stated Menchu. “There are main latent setbacks within the administration of justice.”
Sufferer and survivor actions did have fun a current vital victory, nonetheless. The Constitutional Court docket dominated earlier this month in opposition to an amnesty invoice that may have freed perpetrators of crimes in opposition to humanity.
Greater than 50 associations of victims, survivors and family members are nonetheless ready on the Constitutional Court docket to rule on their challenges to Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei’s closure final yr of three establishments designed to uphold authorities commitments stemming from the 1996 peace accords.
“So far, there was no response,” Feliciana Macario, a consultant of CONAVIGUA, a human rights organisation led by Maya girls whose family members had been killed or disappeared, advised Al Jazeera.
A delegation from the associations attending on Thursday offered a doc to the Constitutional Court docket, urging the court docket to rule on the problem. The march then continued on to the Workplace of the Human Rights Ombudsman, to precise assist for the ombudsman, earlier than ending exterior Congress.
The president’s workplace didn’t reply to Al Jazeera’s request for touch upon the calls for.
Jose Yos was born years after the battle ended, however he participated within the march to honour his grandfather. The 19-year-old travelled on Thursday to the capital along with his mom and sisters from their residence in Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa, 95 kilometres (59 miles) southwest of Guatemala Metropolis.
“My grandfather was a martyr,” Yos, who is known as after his grandfather, advised Al Jazeera. “He fought for human rights and for higher pay.”
Within the late Nineteen Seventies, the elder Yos and different sugarcane harvesters within the Escuintla division started organising with the Campesino Unity Committee. A few of them later joined committee members from different areas in Guatemala Metropolis to protest in opposition to abductions and killings by the military, and on January 31, 1980, they occupied the Spanish Embassy.
A hearth broke out throughout a police raid and 37 folks – eight Spanish diplomats, together with the consul, and 29 civilians, together with Menchu’s father and Yos’s grandfather – burned to loss of life. Greater than 40 years later, their family members proceed to take motion with survivors of atrocities from across the nation.
“I really feel uplifted right here as a result of there’s a sort of unity with different family members of victims,” stated Yos. “What we search is justice.”