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"...Acts such as the killing of defenceless children, often by beating them
against walls or throwing them alive into pits where the corpses of adults were later thrown..."
This was done by the Government to the indigenous Mayan peoples.
READ THE ENTIRE REPORT
In 1962 until the peace accord was signed in Norway on June 23, 1994, Guatemala had a great deal of armed conflict between
the Guatemalan government and what was deemed the insurgency. During this time there were over 200,000 killed or disappeared
as a result of the fratricidal confrontation. Of these victims of arbitrary execution and forced disappearance, eighty-three
percent were Mayan and seventeen percent were Ladino. Victims included men, women and children of all social strata: workers,
professionals, church members, politicians, peasants, students and academics; in ethnic terms, the vast majority were Mayans.
CHILDREN
It has been confirmed with particular concern that a large number of children were also among the direct victims of arbitrary
execution, forced disappearance, torture, rape and other violations of their fundamental rights. Moreover, the armed confrontation
left a large number of children orphaned and abandoned, especially among the Mayan population, who saw their families destroyed
and the possibility of living a normal childhood within the norms of their culture, lost.
WOMEN
The investigation has revealed that approximately a quarter of the direct victims of human rights violations and acts
of violence were women. They were killed, tortured and raped, sometimes because of their ideals and political or social participation,
sometimes in massacres or other indiscriminate actions. Thousands of women lost their husbands, becoming widows and the sole
breadwinners for their children, often with no material resources after the scorched earth policies resulted in the destruction
of their homes and crops. Their efforts to reconstruct their lives and support their families deserve special recognition.
TERROR
It has been confirmed that throughout the armed confrontation the Army designed and implemented a strategy to provoke
terror in the population. The guerrilla organisations committed violent and extremely cruel acts, which terrorised people
and had significant consequences. Arbitrary executions, especially those committed before relatives and neighbours, accentuated
the already prevalent climate of fear, arbitrariness and defencelessness. The investigation has established that beyond the
physical elimination of opponents, either alleged or real, state terror was applied to make it clear that those who attempted
to assert their rights, and even their relatives, ran the risk of death by the most hideous means. This was done by stripping
them of their dignity as individuals, using fire and sword to teach them the lesson that the exercise of their rights as citizens
could mean death. In the majority of massacres there is evidence of multiple acts of savagery, which preceded, accompanied
or occurred after the deaths of the victims. Acts such as the killing of defenceless children, often by beating them against
walls or throwing them alive into pits where the corpses of adults were later thrown; the amputation of limbs; the impaling
of victims; the killing of persons by covering them in petrol and burning them alive; the extraction, in the presence of others,
of the viscera of victims who were still alive; the confinement of people who had been mortally tortured, in agony for days;
the opening of the wombs of pregnant women, and other similarly atrocious acts, were not only actions of extreme cruelty against
the victims, but also morally degraded the perpetrators and those who inspired, ordered or tolerated these actions.
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