AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA
ISSUE BRIEF
January 2007
"What language do I have to speak in for you to take notice of what I'm saying, a girl is being beaten and raped ..." was what a witness reported to the emergency services in February 2001 in the case of Lilia Alejandra García Andrade, after the police failed to respond to an earlier call. Three days later Lilia Alejandra was found dead in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
In Mexico and Guatemala women are being killed at alarming rates but the perpetrators are overwhelmingly never brought to justice. This scandal has led family members of the victims to refer to the problem as a "femicide," the most extreme expression of gender based violence accepted culturally and by the State when its laws don't criminalize violence against women and whereby negligence or the lack of political will results in almost total impunity for the perpetrators of such brutality.
According to comprehensive analysis by Amnesty International, approximately 400 young women have been murdered or abducted in the cities of Juárez and Chihuahua, Mexico since 1993. In Guatemala, over 2,500 women and girls have been murdered since 2001. In Mexico, the brutality with which the assailants abduct and murder the women goes further than the act of killing in a significant number of cases. Many of the women are held captive for several days and subjected to humiliation, torture and the most horrific sexual violence before being killed. In Guatemala some of the victims had their throats cut, were beaten, shot or stabbed to death. Many of their bodies showed signs of rape, torture, mutilation or dismemberment. A range of motives are reflected and both state and non-state actors are involved, but in all cases the victim's gender is a significant factor, in both the kind of violence perpetrated and in the level of response by authorities.
While Amnesty International recognizes that some positive steps have been taken to prevent violence against women in Mexico and Guatemala, those advances are often undermined. Under the administration of Mexican President Vicente Fox a special federal prosecutor reviewed 205 cases in Ciudad Juárez and confirmed Amnesty International?s findings that there was evidence of negligence on the part of local officials. She recommended that the Chihuahua state prosecutor consider administrative or criminal proceedings against 177 state officials who were negligent in the handling of these cases. Amnesty International is aware of arrest warrants being issued for only two officials. They were later dropped.
In early 2006 the Guatemalan "Rape Law" (Article 200) whereby a rapist could escape charges by offering to marry his victim, was deemed unconstitutional. However, legislation addressing violence against women in Guatemala remains severely deficient. For example, Guatemalan law prohibits domestic abuse, but does not provide prison sentences for cases of domestic abuse and prevents abusers from being charged with assault if bruises do not remain visible for at least 10 days. The Guatemalan Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Women reported that her office receives approximately 800 reports of domestic violence per month, with some of those cases ending in murder and that those murders could be prevented if Guatemalan law provided for prison sentences in cases of domestic violence. As of June 2006, of the over six hundred cases of women reported murdered in 2005, to Amnesty International's knowledge, only two convictions had taken place.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA RECOMMENDATIONS:- Cosponsor House Resolution 100 expressing sympathy to the family members of the women and girls killed in Guatemala and urging the Department of State to take specific steps in helping to address this problem with the Guatemalan government.
- Press the Secretary of State and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico to implement specific recommendations of the Concurrent Congressional Resolution on Juarez, which passed unanimously in May 2006, including steps to ensure that addressing these horrendous murders becomes a part of the U.S.-Mexico bilateral agenda.
For information, contact Renata Rendón at 202-544-0200 Ext 251, or visit www.aiusa.org.
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