Haroon Siddique wrote in The Guardian on Virginia Laparra’s struggle for justice and her receiving of the Sir Henry Brooke award.
A Guatemalan anti-corruption prosecutor forced into exile after being pursued by the country’s conservative elite has said that leaving the country was the only way to save her life but was only “a little bit less than death”.
Virginia Laparra, 45, spent two years in prison for allegedly abusing her position after she reported her suspicion that a judge had leaked sensitive details from a sealed corruption case to a colleague in 2017.
The judge, Lesther Castellanos, was sanctioned, but then, with the backing of an extreme rightwing genocide denial group, the Foundation Against Terrorism, filed a joint criminal complaint against Laparra.
She was imprisoned ahead of trial in February 2022 and sentenced to four years in jail in December of the same year for her accusation against Castellanos.
In January last year, she was released under house arrest but in July was jailed for five years for another charge relating to her work.
Facing the prospect of going back to prison and further charges, Laparra left her two daughters behind to seek asylum across the border in Mexico.
In an interview with the Guardian in London after receiving the Alliance for Lawyers at Risk’s Sir Henry Brooke award honouring human rights defenders, Laparra said: “Nobody goes into exile voluntarily. Exile is the only thing left when nothing else has worked, it’s the only thing you’ve got left to defend your life and your freedom.
“Exile is just little bit different, a little bit less than death. [Your persecutors] take everything from you, take away your family, your children, your parents, your house, your way of life, your friends.’
You can read the full piece, with links and photos, here, Exile is ‘a little bit less than death’ for lawyer forced to flee Guatemala.
Categories: Corruption, Criminalisation, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Justice, Solidarity in Action, UK Press Review, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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