Peru Soldiers Face Human Rights Trial for Raping Women in 1980s
Peru Soldiers Face Human Rights Trial for Raping Women in 1980s
Published 10 July 2016
Human rights defenders argue that rape and sexual abuse, especially against Indigenous women, were a part of government's military strategy during Peru's Civil War.
In a landmark legal effort to prosecute systemic wartime sexual violence, fourteen former militry officers are being tried in a Peruvian court for the rape of indigenous women during the country's two-decades-long “dirty war” between government forces and armed guerrilla factions in which tens of thousands were killed and forcibly disappeared.
Peru's top law-enforcement official, Attorney Genera Pablo Sanchez, has moved for the case to be tried as a crime against humanity, a longstanding legal category that has historically been used to prosecute genocide, enslavement, political and religious persecutiion, forced removals and other acts of organized violence carried out against civilian populations. The campaign of sexual abuse committed by military officials between 1984 and 1995 in the largely Indigenous region of Huancavelica represents only the second time that rape has been prosecuted as a crime against humanity at the national level, according to legal experts.
Seven of 14 accused officers appeared in court Friday for a preliminary hearing to begin what is expected to be a lengthy trial. Each of the men faces betwen eight and 20 years in jail if convicted, according to loca media reports.
More:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Peru-Soldiers-Face-Human-Rights-Trial-for-Raping-Women-in-1980s-20160710-0006.html
