Peruvian ex-soldiers who raped teenagers jailed

A court in Peru has convicted ten retired soldiers of raping nine young girls and women during the country’s armed conflict decades ago.

The court declared that the systematic rapes were a crime against humanity.

The soldiers were sentenced to prison terms of between six and twelve years.

While human rights groups celebrated the men’s convictions, some survivors expressed disappointment that the prison sentences were not longer.

The rapes took place between 1984 and 1995 in the Peruvian region of Huancavelica, at the height of the government’s struggle against Maoist rebels.

The rebels, who called themselves the “Shining Path,” were primarily active in rural areas of Peru. The indigenous village population in particular was often caught in the crossfire.

Locals – who were often forced to supply the rebels with food – were often targeted by security forces for alleged collaboration with the rebels.

The soldiers sentenced on Tuesday were stationed in the districts of Manta and Vilca in the Andes.

The court found that they systematically raped local girls and women in their army bases, at checkpoints and in the women’s homes.

Survivors testified that the soldiers got away with their actions with complete impunity.

Women’s rights groups described the verdicts – the first imposed on former soldiers for sexual abuse – as “historic”.

They said it was a milestone in the fight to bring perpetrators of crimes against humanity to justice.

However, some survivors said they would have liked longer prison sentences for the former soldiers.

One called the soldiers “cowards” because they did not appear in court for the verdict.

Human rights groups hope that the Manta and Vilca case will lay the groundwork for prosecutions of other alleged crimes related to the conflict with the Shining Path.

However, a bill currently being considered in the Peruvian parliament could mean that crimes against humanity committed before 2002 can no longer be brought to justice in Peru.

The widespread nature of sexual violence against women living near the army bases of Manta and Vilca was documented in a 2003 report by Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The report identified 24 women who had been raped in the area. Sexual violence was so common that at least 32 children were born as a result of the rapes, the commission added.

One of the survivors, who gave birth to two children after repeated rapes, expressed the hope that “these criminals will now go to prison.”

The Truth Commission’s report showed that sexual abuse was not limited to this area, stating that more than 5,300 women were abused across the country during the armed conflict.

While the majority of sexual assaults – 83 percent, according to the report – were committed by security forces, mass atrocities committed by the Shining Path also occurred.

In a particularly bloody massacre, rebels in Santiago de Lucanamarca killed 69 locals with axes, machetes and rifles in retaliation for the killing of a Shining Path commander.

In total, almost 70,000 people were killed or disappeared during the internal conflict, which reached its peak in the 1980s and early 1990s.