WUNRN
By Ángel Páez
Micaela is
one of the few women to have suffered sexual attacks to overcome her fears. She
has accused soldiers from the counterinsurgency base at Manta, an extremely
poor area in the southern Andean region of Huancavelica, of raping her when she
was 15 years old.
"I
cannot deny feeling some fear of reprisals from the men I accuse. I don't want
them to hurt my family," Micaela told IPS.
"But
when they are sentenced, I will have true peace - when they are in prison
paying for what they have done. When justice is done, at that time I will have
peace," she said, after waiting a quarter of a century.
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Thanks to Micaela's testimony, some of the
most powerful and damning to emerge from the handful of women who have spoken
up, in March 2009 a judge opened a prosecution against 10 army soldiers from
the counterinsurgency bases in the villages of Manta and Vilca.
The men are
accused of raping seven women, including Micaela.
Because of
her fears of reprisal from the military, which used sexual violence as a
counterinsurgency tool during the internal armed conflict, this woman asked IPS
to use the fictitious name of Micaela.
Now she
lives with her children in the south of the country, and has to travel at least
eight hours to Lima every time the judge summons her to take part in the case.
When she shared her experiences with IPS, she was in the Peruvian capital for a
psychological assessment.
Although the
events took place 25 years ago, Micaela is obliged for legal reasons to recall
every detail of the rapes. She is being asked for a meticulous description of
each instance of abuse, and to identify the rapists.
But what
angers her most is the desperately slow pace of the prosecution, and the
impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators.
All the
travelling back and forth, and having to remember everything all over again,
especially the faces of the rapists, is an ordeal for Micaela, who grimaces just
thinking about it. She says she puts up with it for the sake of that peace she
hopes will come with justice.
In 2003, the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR) documented 538 cases of rape during the
civil war, with 527 female and 11 male victims. Its report concluded that
sexual violence was used by the state armed forces as part of an
anti-subversive strategy.
The CVR was
established by the provisional government that replaced the regime of President
Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) after he fled the country, to clarify acts of
terrorist violence and human rights abuses committed by all sides in the war
waged by Maoist Shining Path guerrillas and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary
Movement (MRTA) against state forces.
President
Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) widened the scope of the CVR to include
recommending measures to judge human rights violations and making reparations
to victims of the violence. The CVR concluded its work in 2003.
But those
responsible for crimes have gone unpunished, and so far there are only two
cases before the courts. One of them is the case of mass sexual abuse in Vilca
and Manta, in which Micaela is a plaintiff.
Seventy-five
percent of the women who were assaulted are native Quechua speakers, 83 percen
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nt are from rural areas, and the vast
majority were between 10 and 19 years old when they were sexually abused, Diana
Portal, the lawyer in the case of the raped victims, told IPS.
"This
means that sexual violence during the internal war had a differential impact
depending on gender, age, ethnic identity and social class. The violence was
concentrated among poor indigenous peasant women of reproductive age,"
said the activist from the non-governmental legal aid organisation DEMUS
(Organisation for the Defence of Women's Rights).
Portal added
that in spite of the seriousness of the crimes, the Peruvian government has not
complied with the Truth Commission's recommendations for solving the cases and
punishing those responsible.
"In
general, the Peruvian state is not dealing effectively with these cases,"
she said.
"The
closure of the Reparations Council for the Victims of Violence is evidence of
lack of political will, commitment and responsibility on the part of the
government. This affects the process of registering victims in general, and
women in particular," the DEMUS lawyer said.
According to
Portal, this is only one of the signs that lead her to conclude that "the
balance of justice and reparations is negative in the case of sexual abuses
during the civil war."
The state
General Victims' Registry has a list of 532 persons who allege they were
sexually abused during the internal armed conflict. The main perpetrators were
troops deployed in "emergency zones", areas under military control
because of a declared local state of emergency due to a threat from insurgents.
The
non-governmental Institute for Legal Defence reported that one factor hampering
the investigation is that many of those responsible for the rapes have not been
identified, because they used aliases during the war period.
The judge in
the case asked the Defence Ministry to obtain the list of soldiers who served
in the Manta and Vilca bases from the army. But the Defence Minister has so far
refused to comply, which human rights activists do not find surprising.
During the
Toledo administration, judicial authorities received information about human
rights violators. But the government of current President Alan García, who took
office in 2006, refuses to provide judges with the identities of military
personnel, on the grounds that they do not have the information on file. García
was also president of Peru from 1985 to 1990.
The judicial
branch has had to resort to carrying out DNA tests of military suspects, the
women victims and their children.
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