Violence against women

We were recently contacted by Adrien Trocme from the project LA Ruta. In Adrien's words "We are currently working on the project called La Ruta. We are informing our readers about the themes mentioned in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) putting special emphasis on the opinion of the civil society and the social movements." They made this film, called "Mindy's Nightmare", which you can watch here. It is pretty disturbing, especially given that the Mindy wears a mask throughout, but also because of what it shows about the operation of "justice" in her case.

Norma Cruz is a woman with a very serious commitment to justice, a commitment which has led to her being threatend on many occasions. Her particular area of interest is women, and ensuring that they and their families can achieve justice for violent crimes agains them. Such is her determination that she has not only been noticed by those who would like to stop her, but also internationally, as she won the Woman of Courage award in 2009.

Sadly, she is receiving threats again, these threats have mentioned a specific case which she is following at the moment. Our colleagues in the United States, at the Guatemala Human Rights Commission, have set up a letter for those
concerned to sign. The letter will be sent to the President of the Supreme Court, Álvarez Mancilla. For more details, and to sign up, please follow this link.

On 26 March the wife of the Human Rights Ombudsman, Gladys Monterroso, also a lawyer and a politician in the Encuentro por Guatemala party was kidnapped for several hours and tortured before being released.

Juana Mendez will be remembered in Guatemala as the first woman who succeeded in achieving a conviction against a serving police officer  for mistreating her in custody.

During her detention at the police station in Nebaj she was raped and sexually assaulted by several officers, one of whom was finally brought to justice. The Institute of Comparative Studies in Penal Sciences, ICCPG from its initials in Spanish, and Project Counselling Services, have made a film about the case which you can see here, in three parts:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyrTJY54i0g

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEIR2Ja0eEs

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3ZtvuXNgrg

Our visitor from Guatemala, Iduvina Hernandez, will speak at the first ever conference on Latin American Women and Gender Abuse in the UK on 25 November. The event has been organised by the Latin American Women's Rights Service, starts at 2.30pm and is being held at the Bolivar Hall, Grafton Road, London W1T 5DL.

A map of how to get to the event can be found here.

Iduvina's full programme can be found here - this is still being updated so please check back to see what has been added. 

Here is the full description of the conference, plus details of how to register: