For the last month, Guatemala has been holding trial for war crimes committed in the 1980’s, to determine if genocide was performed.  On trial is Jose Efrain Rios Montt, an ex-military dictator.  He stands accused of ordering the slaughter of more than 1,700 Ixil Mayans, a small native people who only represent 1% of the Guatemalan population

The military justified the killings at the time by saying the Mayans were harboring the rebel liberal soldiers the government was fighting.  The crimes Montt is accused of are extremely brutal, including rape, murder, and burning entire villages.

Many victims who managed to escape the brutality have come back to testify against Montt in trial.  They currently number more than 100, and more are taking the stand every day.

Many of the testimonies of the victims are graphic, and leaving people in the courtroom in tears.

“They killed my family and destroyed our crops,” victim Jacinto Lopez said.

However, this trial is significant in the fact that it is the first time that a former head of state is being tried for genocide in his own country.  Montt’s sentence would be unknown if convicted, but former trials that have convicted soldiers of similar crimes have received a sentence of over 6,000 years.

Although the United States is being credited for supporting the trial, it can also potentially be blamed for ignoring the accounts of genocide that came through at the time of Montt’s rule, and even supporting him by secretly supplying him with weapons.

The trial currently has been continuing for twenty days, amidst declarations from the defense ordering an annulment, and protesters sympathetic to the defense outside the courthouse, picketing the trial.

Either way, the victims see this trial as a healing process, and getting to tell their stories is freedom from what they have endured.

“[The trial] opens up the nation to conversation.  It lets people see that the justice system works,” observer Naomi Roht-Arriaza said.

Source: CNN News