Two former Guatemalan soldiers have been sentenced to 120 and 240 years in prison after they were found guilty of crimes against humanity, including the systematic rape and enslavement of 11 women in the northeastern Sepur Zarco military base during a 10-month period from 1982 to 1983.
Retired Officer Esteelmer Reyes Giron, 59, was found guilty of keeping 15 women in sexual and domestic slavery and for killing one woman and her two young daughters. Former soldier Heriberto Valdez Asij, 74, was convicted for the same enslavement and for the forced disappearance of seven men, BBC News reported.
There were cheers in court as the judge read the sentence. "We find the treatment of the women of Sepur Zarco to have been completely humiliating and degrading," Judge Jazmin Barrios declared.
Barrios overruled the notion that sexual violence in the military base was to satisfy the sexual desires of the soldiers, determining instead that it was used as a weapon of war. "There was a strategic design to pulverize the social fabric and to prevent its reproductive," she said, according to TeleSUR.
During a series of 20 hearings through the past month, 11 women from the Mayan Q'eqchi' community described their experiences of physical and emotional deterioration during six months of systematic rape and domestic enslavement. More than 35 boxes of evidence were presented in court, including some with human remains that were exhumed in 2012 by the Guatemalan Foundation for Forensic Anthropology, according to The International Justice Monitor.
While the cumulative 360-year sentences are somewhat symbolic, since Guatemalan law limits the duration of any prison sentence to 50 years, the trial has been historic for two reasons: it marks the first time that sexual slavery has been prosecuted as a war crime in the country where it is alleged to have occurred, and this was the first time that a local court made a ruling for sexual crimes in Guatemala, as the Central American country works toward addressing abuses committed during its brutal 1960-1996 civil war, the Associated Press noted.
"This is historic, it is a great step for women and above all for the victims," said Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, who attended the hearing.
These crimes occurred under ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who is currently facing retrial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, including the slaughter of 1,771 Maya Ixil indigenous people in Guatemala's Quiche region in 1982-83.
In total, Guatemala's civil war left more than 200,000 dead, according to a United Nations' 1999 Truth and Reconciliation report, with the Mayan population representing 83 percent of the victims.
