Northwestern Region SIA, Legislative Advocacy

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GUATEMALA:
'FEMICIDE' GROWS, WITH 1,300 WOMEN MURDERED SINCE 2001

By Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jul. 5, 2004 (IPS/GIN) -- Much attention has been given to the case of Mexico's Ciudad Juárez, where more than 300 young women have been murdered over the past decade.

But there is little awareness that in neighbouring Guatemala, 1,300 women have been killed since 2001.

In an interview with IPS, Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchú said police and judicial authorities are implicated in some of the killings in Guatemala, where one woman a day is killed on average, including victims of domestic violence, but mainly the deaths resulting from criminal murder.

The "femicide", as the Guatemalan indigenous human rights activist described the killings, is documented by official statistics, which report some 1,300 cases since 2001.

Femicide is gender-related homicide, defined as the killing or murder of women that occurs because the victim is a woman.

The victims in Guatemala, most of whom come from poor segments of society, have been strangled, shot, stabbed or mutilated, while most of their killers are never brought to justice or even identified.

Of the 383 cases reported in 2003, only 77 were clarified. "There is appalling impunity," said Menchú, who described the murderers as "pitiless, sick people."

So far this year, 230 women have died violent deaths in Guatemala. Many of their bodies were found in garbage dumps or remote rural areas, or simply left on the streets.

"The state is absent in Guatemala, because although it is responsible for public safety, it lacks the law enforcement mechanisms to prevent or clarify the murders of women," Patricia Pinto, a member of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women's Rights and the Collective for the Defence of Women in Guatemala, told IPS.

Adequate police investigation systems do not exist in the impoverished Central American country of 12 million, where impunity reigns, said the activist.

Pinto pointed out that of the 19,000 reports of domestic violence received by prosecutors in 2002, just 10 were fully resolved in favour of the women reporting the violence.

Although the conservative Guatemalan government of President Oscar Berger, in office since January, says it is concerned about the country's rising crime rates, "all we hear are expressions of concern and promises that this and that" commission or other mechanism will be created, and no tangible results have yet been seen, she maintained.

Guatemala's National Civil Police created a special unit to deal with the homicides of women, but it has not yet come up with significant results, she added.

According to the police, 21 percent of the murders of women are gang-related -- youth gangs, known as 'maras', are a growing problem in Central American countries -- another 21 percent are the result of armed robbery, and the rest are "crimes of passion" or the result of drug-related violence and rape.

"I believe the murders of so many women is one of the echoes of the civil war that my country experienced, which left very deep imprints of violence and resentment," said Menchú.

Between 1960 and 1996, Guatemala was torn by a civil war between the U.S.-backed security forces and guerrilla insurgents. According to a "truth commission"report, the army was responsible for the deaths of most of the 200,000 civilians, mainly rural Mayan Indians, who were killed in the war.

Both Menchú and Pinto urged the Berger administration and the Guatemalan justice system to carry out an in-depth review of the way the violence against women has been handled, and to come up with concrete actions to stop the "femicide".

Although the magnitude of the problem has drawn the attention of the United Nations and several international human rights groups, high-profile cases like Ciudad Juárez in northern Mexico, on the border with the United States, where most of the 300 young women killed over the past decade had been previously raped, have received more attention.

In Guatemala, however, 383 women were killed in 2003 alone. "Everyone knows about the murdered women of Ciudad Juárez, but it's as if the case of the murdered women of Guatemala were being hushed up," said Hilda Morales with Guatemala's Non-Violence network.

When U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women Yakin Erturk visited Guatemala in February, she expressed alarm at the murders, describing them as atrocious, and saying that most of the victims were raped, sexually assaulted and mutilated.

To confront the wave of violent crime, reflected by a 14.3 percent rise in the number of homicides between 2002 and 2003, President Berger promised to purge the police force of criminal elements, which were brought to public attention after a spate of robberies.

He also pledged that women who report cases of violence would receive improved treatment by the justice system.

But activists are not confident that things will improve. "There have been many promises, but now it is time to curb the violence and protect women," said Menchú.

more info http://www.americas.org/item_506 or
http://www.amnesty.org.nz/web/pages/home.nsf/
d305365f5c72ed17cc256e46000d1c6b/904d77a1992257f6cc256e47000
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Trish Quinland
Legislative Advocacy, Chair
Soroptimist NW Region
2308 12th St.
Anacortes, WA 98221
360-293-6352
mermama@cnw.com