CJA

The death of former Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary is a reminder that the UN-backed tribunal needs a proper exit strategy as it winds down its work, observers say.

Guatemala juzga por primera vez en la historia el crimen de genocidio cometido durante el conflicto armado interno que asoló el país durante 36 años. Con la excusa de luchar contra la guerrilla, más de 200.000 personas, en su mayoría de origen maya, fueron masacradas entre 1960 y 1996 fruto de un minucioso plan elaborado por el ejército. Uno de los principales artífices de las matanzas, el ex presidente, el general Efraín Ríos Montt, está siendo finalmente juzgado por estos crímenes.

The Justice Department has released a United States immigration judge’s ruling ordering the deportation of a former high-ranking Salvadoran military officer over his role in the 1980 rape and murder of four American churchwomen and other crimes there.

The first female Attorney General of Guatemala is taking on some of the country’s most powerful kingpins, past dictators and local crime bosses. She’s lowered the Central American nation’s high crime rate and brought justice for victims of the 36 year old civil war. Dr. Paz y Paz will be receiving the 2013 Judith Lee Stronach Human Rights Award at CJA’s 15th Anniversary Dinner.

The passing of Ieng Sary and the dismissal of Ieng Thirith for mental unfitness—and the advanced age and poor health of the remaining two Khmer Rouge defendants (Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan)—make imperative the need for an efficient and exhaustive decision on the liability of Khmer Rouge era atrocities.

General Ríos Montt’s congressional term ended in January 2012. Two weeks later, he was indicted for genocide in his home country. Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war was one of the bloodiest and most vicious of modern times, pitting state security forces and their allies against leftist rebels. By the war’s end in 1996, and in a country one-fourth the size of California, more than 200,000 people were killed or disappeared.

More than 200,000 people were killed or disappeared in Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war. It was one of the bloodiest and most vicious of modern times. But one period was especially brutal, the one in which General Efraín Rios Montt was in charge.

A judge had just ruled that the military dictator, Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, now 86, should stand trial for genocide and crimes against humanity committed under his rule in the 1980s, a decision Mr. Utuy and other Maya survivors of Guatemala’s 34-year civil war had gathered in the courtroom to hear in person.

March 19, sees the scheduled start date for the oral phase of the trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against Rios Montt and Rodriguez Sanchez. They are accused of being the intellectual authors of the assassination of 1,771 indigenous Mayans of Ixil ethnicity in the Quiche Department, the forced displacement of 29,000, and sexual violations and torture, in massacres and violations perpetrated by the Guatemalan military during Rios Montt’s 17-month rule between 1982 and 1983.