Justice In Guatemala: A Sentence For Crimes Against Humanity In Molina Theissen Landmark Case

It took 37 years to make justice. But at dawn on Wednesday, four former high-ranking Guatemalan military officers were convicted of crimes against humanity. They were also found guilty of aggravated sexual abuse against a young activist, Emma Molina Theissen, and three of them were also convicted for the forced disappearance of Emma's 14-year-old brother Marco Antonio.

The sentence is one of the most significant landmarks in Guatemala's struggle to investigate and prosecute human rights violations that took place during Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war. The Molina Theissen case is one that shows how the "Guatemalan justice system has not bowed under pressure from powerful military and economic elites to end human rights prosecutions", professor Jo-Marie Burt explains in Nina Lakhani's piece in The Guardian.

The military's counterinsurgency operations used to detain, torture, kill or "disappear" people considered to be the internal enemy. The army's focus was on ideological opponents, suspected communists or critics of the dictatorship, but the Molina Theissen case demonstrates that counterinsurgents also targeted women and children. A recent investigation, moreover, demonstrated that people who did not identify as heterosexual were also key targets of the repressive regime (link in Spanish).

Lakhani's piece explains the context in greater detail. But as the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights highlighted in a statement, this and other rulings in Guatemala's transitional justice top cases send a clear message that "it is possible for Guatemala to advance in the fight against impunity of the past".

For years, an old picture of Marco Antonio Molina Theissen has been a symbol of the systematic violence against innocents conducted by the military and intelligence forces in Guatemala. Since Wednesday's dawn, it may well turn out to become a symbol of how justice, albeit slowly, arrives to those who struggle to make it a reality.