Inter-American Court to hear human rights cases 7/19/2009 Regional court to rule on 26-year-old massacre, 2006 land case.

The Inter-American Human Rights Court has scheduled a hearing for July 14 to decide whether the Guatemalan government is responsible for the 1982 massacre of more than 250 villagers, including men, women and children.

A special forces unit of the Guatemalan army entered the Dos Erres village in the northern province of Peten, in December 1982, and according to reports, bludgeoned the victims, 251 in total, to death and threw them in the area´s wells. Some women and girls were raped.

It was a part of the government´s “scorched earth” campaign, in which some 200,000 Guatemalans were killed. Dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who ruled from 1982-83, oversaw this bloody phase of the country´s armed conflict.

While the government reached a settlement with victims´ family members in 2001, Guatemalan courts never found anyone responsible, so the regional court will now hear the case in a session in La Paz, Bolivia July 13-15.

The court session will also include a public hearing on whether the government of Paraguay is adhering to a verdict it issued in March 2006 ordering the state to guarantee “various conventional rights” to the Sawhoyamaxa indigenous community.

The regional body said the state must implement policies to ensure the development of the community, which lacked education, birth certificates and suffered from malnutrition. The court also found that the indigenous community was stripped of its native lands and ordered the government to return the traditional lands to the group within three years. —Latinamerica Press.