Five get jail for racism against Guatemala's Menchu

Five get jail for racism against Guatemala's Menchu
05 Apr 2005 00:12:00 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Frank Jack Daniel

GUATEMALA CITY, April 4 (Reuters) - Five Guatemalans were found guilty on Monday of racial discrimination against Nobel prize winner Rigoberta Menchu in the Central American country's first racism trial.

During the month-long trial, prosecution lawyers ran video footage showing the five pushing, shoving and screaming racist abuse at Menchu during a 2003 Constitutional Court hearing related to a repeat bid for the presidency by retired Gen. Efrain Rios Montt.

"Go back to the market and sell tomatoes, Indian!" they yelled at Menchu, a Maya Indian, during that earlier hearing.

A tribunal of three judges sentenced each to three years and two months in prison for discrimination and disturbing the peace. Each must pay a $400 fine and can avoid imprisonment by paying additional fines of about $10 for each day of jail time under the sentence.

Menchu, an activist for Maya Indian rights, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, was cheered by supporters after the verdict. She described the sentence as "marvelous."

"Today we have a great experience that we can communicate to our children, that nobody should discriminate against anybody else, that nobody should offend the dignity of anybody else just because they speak another language or come from another part of the country," she told reporters.

The convicted are members of the opposition Guatemalan Republican Front and include Juan Pablo Rios, the grandson of party leader and former dictator Rios Montt.

The four women and a man declined to comment after hearing the sentence read in the Supreme Court. The defense said it would appeal after analyzing the sentence.

The ruling sets a precedent against the racism that is part of daily life for many of the Maya Indians, who make up more than half of Guatemala's 12 million inhabitants.

A United Nations representative last year described Guatemala's racism as "deep and serious," but until 2002 no legislation prohibited discriminatory behavior.

Maya women, whose vivid hand-woven clothes make them easily visible in cities and highland villages, are particularly vulnerable to discrimination.

Rios Montt's 1982-83 presidency coincided with the most violent years of Guatemala's 36-year civil war, in which some 200,000 people were killed or disappeared, most of them Mayan civilians killed by the army.