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09/17/2004:

"Murderers target Guatemala's young women"

by Dan Glaister
More than 350 women have been murdered in Guatemala this year, placing the central American state at the centre of alarm over so-called femicide.

Most of the Guatemalan killings have taken place in poor areas of the capital, Guatemala City, but there have also been clusters of deaths in the east and south of the country.

The victims are primarily aged between 16 and 35, most are poor, and many are members of the country's indigenous population.

While the government has sought to blame the murders on youth gang violence, local human rights campaigners argue that the scale and methods suggest otherwise.

"Violence against women today has reached an extreme level," said José Flores, a spokesman for Guatemala's human rights commission. "Many of the methods involved in the killings - torture, coups de grace to the back of the neck, all the techniques of extra-judicial executions - stem from the practices of recent years," he said, in a reference to the murders that characterised the country's protracted civil war between 1960 and 1996. A truth commission reported that about 200,000 civilians, mainly Mayan Indians, were killed during that time.

Full Article: Guardian UK