(Lima) Ten retired Peruvian soldiers were sentenced Wednesday to six to twelve years in prison for crimes against humanity, found guilty of the systematic rape of nine women, sometimes minors, between 1984 and 1985, during the conflict internal army against the Maoist guerrillas of the Shining Path.
This sentence ends five years of proceedings in a case that has become emblematic in Peru, being the first to judge sexual violence committed by soldiers.
None of the ten condemned, represented by their lawyers, was present when the judgment was read. Three other soldiers were convicted in absentia.
The systematic rapes began in 1984, when the Peruvian army set up a base near the Andean towns of Manta and Vilca in the Huancavelica region (south), one of the poorest in Peru.
Some of the victims were minors and five of them became pregnant, their lawyers recalled.
Human rights activists and relatives of the victims gathered in front of the court on Wednesday. Cynthia Silva, a member of the feminist organization Demus, expressed satisfaction to AFP about “a first conviction of soldiers in South America for multiple gang rapes”.
“It’s been 40 long years of fierce struggle. Hopefully this will be a positive decision for us and these criminals will end up in prison,” said Maria, one of the victims whose last name is withheld by court order, in an audio message sent by her lawyer to AFP before the verdict.
This 54-year-old woman has two children from these rapes, perpetrated when she was 15 years old.
The affair was revealed in 2003 by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which collected 35 denunciations of repeated sexual violence by members of the armed forces in Huancavelica, perpetrated between 1984 and 1995.
According to the TRC, during two decades of armed violence in Peru (1980-2000), hundreds of cases of rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced marriages and abortions were recorded. The Single Register of Victims of Armed Conflict puts the number of cases of rape reported at 5,882.
The Shining Path, which launched an armed insurrection in 1980, clashed for decades with the armed forces during a conflict which left 69,000 dead and missing according to the CRV.