Guatemalan women alleging gang-rape can use explosive corporate documents in Hudbay case
By Max Binks-Collier
Special to the Star
Thu., Oct. 1, 2020
5 min. read
Eleven Guatemalan women who claim they were gang-raped during an eviction allegedly orchestrated by a Canadian mining company can update an important legal document with facts from dozens of corporate documents — including ones detailing the company’s close relationships with the Guatemalan police and army, a judge ruled Wednesday.
These documents came to light in a high-profile lawsuit that the 11 Indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ women are waging against the Toronto-based mining company Hudbay Minerals Inc.
The women are suing Hudbay because they allege that on Jan. 17, 2007, Guatemalan police officers, soldiers, and security for a Guatemalan mining company, CGN, gang-raped them during an eviction of their village. At the time, CGN was a subsidiary of the Vancouver-based mining company Skye Resources. The 11 women allege that Skye was negligent in how it arranged the eviction, and that its negligence endangered them in part because it did not take reasonable steps to prevent violence, including on the part of the Guatemalan police and military. In 2008, Hudbay amalgamated with Skye, acquiring any legal liability resulting from the role Skye allegedly played in the gang-rapes.
. . .
These documents shed light on Skye and CGN’s relationships with the police and army. Numerous emails and spreadsheets show that Skye and CGN funnelled close to $140,000 (U.S.) to the Guatemalan police and army by sending the money to three well-connected middlemen “in cash or direct transfers to personal bank accounts,” their affidavit states. Some money went to logistical supplies like the gasoline and meals of the police and army, while one document records that “there are rumours” of $157,895 being paid to the armed forces “for their work in the land evictions,” as The Intercept reported.
The women used other documents to flesh out how the close co-operation between the companies and the Guatemalan police in particular played out: one memorandum shows that a CGN middleman and a police chief flew in a helicopter over the 11 women’s village the day before the alleged gang-rapes to conduct reconnaissance. In another email sent shortly before an eviction on Jan. 8, 2007, a community-relations consultant wrote that CGN’s general manager is “heavily involved in last minute preparations with the police.”
More:
https://www.thestar.com/business/2020/10/01/guatemalan-women-alleging-gang-rape-can-use-explosive-corporate-documents-in-hudbay-case.html