Historical judgment: 40 years in prison for rapists in the civil war!

Historical judgment: 40 years in prison for rapists in the civil war!

Guatemala, Guatemala - A court in Guatemala recently sentenced three former paramilitary members of 40 years of prison each. The men were guilty of raping six indigenous women between 1981 and 1983 during the civil war. This conviction is a central step in finding justice for Maya Achi women who suffered from the sexual abuse through pro-governmental groups during this conflict. The pronouncement of the judgment took place on May 31, 2025 and was led by judge Maria Eugenia Castellanos, who praised the courage of the survivors who testified in the process.

The convicted men are Pedro Sanchez, Simeon Enriquez and Felix Tum, who were guilty of crimes against humanity. The advocate Haydee Valey described this judgment as "historical" and thus recognizes the long -term struggle of the survivors of the civil war. Like

The context of the convictions

This conviction is the second in a process that deals with the severe offenses against the Maya Achi community. The first trial resulted in a conviction of five former paramilitaries in January 2022, which also received 30 years in prison. The allegations related to the Maya Achi women first loudly loud between 2011 and 2015 and affect a total of 36 victims. Paulina Ixpata, a Maya Achi woman, stated during the current procedure that she was brutally raped and spent 25 days in captivity through the military patrol, like Devdiscourse reported.

The civil war in Guatemala, which lasted from 1960 to 1996, led to up to 200,000 dead and missing. Initially, sexual acts of violence against indigenous women were used as part of the military strategy for oppression. The Advocacy Group Impunity Watch emphasized that these judgments shed light on the way the Guatemal Army used sexual violence as a weapon of war. In a further sensational case of 2016, two military officers were sentenced to 360 years in prison because they kept 15 women of the Q’EQchi community as sex slaves.

scientific context

The experiences of the Maya Women during the civil war in Guatemala were also dealt with in academic work, such as in Anja Titze's contribution "Sexualized war power of Maya women in the civil war in Guatemala: When the silence ends, the refurbishment begins", published in the collection "War and Gender in the 2021) (2021). These studies underline the diverse dimensions of gender issues in war research and offer a valuable perspective on the events in the Guatemala of the time. The article is under de Gruyter