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Guatemalan paramilitaries go on trial for massacre
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-20 10:03

Six former paramilitary fighters went on trial in Guatemala on Tuesday for taking part in the killing of scores of women and children in 1982, one of the country's worst wartime massacres.

According to a 1999 U.N.-backed truth report, soldiers and paramilitaries raped women and smashed children's heads open on rocks during the massacre of 143 Maya Indians in the village of Rio Negro.

Former paramilitary fighters stand trial October 19, 2004 in Salama, Guatemala. The six men are accused of taking part in the army-led massacre of 143 Mayan women and children from the village of Rio Negro in central Guatemala's Maya Indian heartland in March 1982, during the country's long civil war.[Reuters]

Survivors say the accused, also Maya Indians from a neighboring village, were sent to kill Rio Negro residents because they refused to abandon their lands to allow Guatemala's electricity authority Inde to build a dam funded by the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.

"The brothers and sisters who died were not animals. What we want is justice to be brought to those responsible," witness Teresa Alvarado told Reuters outside a small court room surrounded by banana plants.

After a discussion about the need to translate the proceedings from Spanish into local Maya language Achi, the trial was postponed for 10 days.

Witnesses of a 1982 massacre attend the trial of 6 ex-paramilitary fighters October 19, 2004 in Salama, Guatemala.[Reuters]

Defense lawyer Otto Ramirez said his clients were innocent. "They weren't there on the day of the massacre," he said.

After the initial massacre, survivors fled to the hills, where many died of hunger or illness, or to nearby villages, where they were hunted down and killed.

In total, more than 300 people were killed.

The truth report described the campaign against Rio Negro as "deeds of genocide." It concluded that over 200,000 people were killed or disappeared during the war, most of them Maya civilians attacked by the army.

In 1999, three ex-paramilitaries were sentenced for taking part in the massacre. One high ranking army officer is wanted for the crime but has so far escaped arrest.

The atrocity took place at the peak of the 36-year war and followed years of conflict between villagers and authorities over the construction of the Chixoy dam downstream from the village.

The civil war ended with 1996 peace agreements between leftist insurgents and the government but the slowness of Guatemala's legal system means the accused were only arrested last year.

Chixoy produces 275 megawatts of energy annually, and is now Guatemala's main source of electricity.

The World Bank continued to issue loans for the dam even after the massacres. The institution acknowledges the violence but says it knew nothing of it at the time.

In September, villagers from Rio Negro briefly occupied the dam to pressure the government and the World Bank to start negotiations for compensation for land lost.

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