Feminist Peace Network

PRESS RELEASE
Guatemala: Women Organizations Receive Threats

We wish to draw to public attention, and to denounce in the strongest terms,
threats against women’s organizations in Guatemala working for women’s
rights. In particular, we refer to threats recently directed against our
activists in Actoras de Cambio (Women Acting for Change). We are a
Consortium formed by two Guatemalan NGOs, the National Union of Guatemalan
Women and the Community and Psychosocial Action Study Team.

“Stop doing what you are doing - unless you want to be one more raped and
widowed woman!” was the way one threat against a member of Actoras de Cambio
was worded. Such an explicit warning of rape and murder represents an
assault on the personal integrity and life of our members and their
families. It indicates a heightened level of danger for defenders of human
rights in Guatemala.

Actoras de Cambio is an NGO that gives psychosocial support and education in
woman rights to women who were victims of sexual violence during the armed
conflict. Our aim is to strengthen women survivors so that they may be able
to take hold of and redirect their own ‘life projects’ and to play more
active roles in their communities and in the country.

It is clear that these attacks on our organization are politically
motivated. The intention in threatening individual women is to damage the
emotional and physical well-being of our whole team, to put a stop to our
programme of work for empowerment, for the recovery of self-respect, and for
compensation and justice for women who survived sexual violence in the armed
conflict.

During the war in Guatemala sexual violence was used as a weapon to generate
terror in the population. The fighting ended twelve years ago, but rape has
continued to be commonplace in the postwar period. In recent years,
especially in the cities, it has been compounded with sexual torture,
mutilation and murder of many women: a campaign of femicide that is directly
reminiscent of the war years.

This widespread and growing violence against women, the product of an
oppressive system based on unequal gender relations, is exacerbated by the
failure of the legal system in Guatemala, where crimes are seldom
investigated or punished. This regime of impunity results from unjust social
structures in our country, which allow criminals to act under the protection
of, or even with the complicity of state institutions.

We wish to express our solidarity with all those organizations defending
human rights in Guatemala, whether national or international, that have been
the victims of threat or attack. We demand the Guatemalan government to
launch a thorough investigation of all these criminal acts and to punish the
people responsible.

In turn, we ask for solidarity from national bodies, the international
community and the media. Please put pressure on the Guatemalan government to
enforce the rule of law and fulfil its obligation to protect the human
rights of every citizen - not least the rights of those who are precisely
struggling to defend rights.

The Consortium Actoras de Cambio (Women Acting for Change), the Union
Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas (UNAMG).

El Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Accion Psicosocial (ECAP)

Guatemala.
15th June 2007

Filed under: Uncategorized, Atrocities