After one month of intensive training at the main office in Stockholm we have finally arrived in Guatemala, where I will stay for the duration of the year. Right now, we are in Antigua and we have already had our first day of training here. On Monday we will move into Guatemala city and start our training with our partner organization ACOGUATE.
Guatemala suffered civil war between 1960-1996 and a genocide that had its greatest intensity during the 1980's. Whole villages were massacred in pursuit of guerilla, and people were arbitrarily arrested and disappeared. 16 years after the civil war officially ended victims and relatives that demand justice, gather evidence from the massacres and step forward to witness in trials still fear violence and intimidation.
A lot of the work that I will be doing here will circle around the judicial process and to accompany the witnesses. During this year, I will accompany the witnesses both in their homes and during the trial hearings. The purpose of my presence is to dissuade the abuse of the their human rights.
The 20th of March 2012 five soldiers were sentenced to 7 710 years of prison for committing the massacre at Plan de Sánchez in 1982 when 256 identified victims were murdered. On January 26th the ex-dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was prosecuted for genocide.
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