2 the IACHR on November 1, 2010.1 In that report, the Commission declared that the petition was admissible and indicated that the facts alleged could tend to establish violations of the rights recognized in articles 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 21, 22, 24 and 25 of the American Convention, read in conjunction with Article 1(1) thereof, and Article I of the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons. Furthermore, in application of the principle of jura novit curia, the Commission concluded that the petition was admissible for a possible violation of the rights established in Articles 3 and 23 of the American Convention, both read in conjunction with Article 1(1) thereof. 6. On November 29, 2010, the IACHR sent a communication to the parties advising them that the admissibility report had been approved and placing itself at their disposal with a view to reaching a friendly settlement. Also, in keeping with the Rules of Procedure then in force, the Commission invited the petitioners to submit, within two months, any additional observations they might have concerning the merits. On February 28, 2011, the petitioners submitted their additional observations on the merits. The State presented observations on March 22, June 17 and July 29, 2011. 7. Thereafter, the petitioners submitted observations on September 24, November 1 and 7 and December 19, 2011; March 22, June 29 and October 19, 2012; September 13 and December 11, 2013; and March 10, 19 and 20, 2014. For its part, the State submitted observations on January 25, March 16, June 28 and October 26, 2012; and July 24, September 24 and December 11, 2013. 8. All briefs were duly forwarded to the other parties. III. THE PARTIES’ POSITIONS A. The petitioners 9. The petitioners described the massacre that occurred in the village of Chichupac on January 8, 1982, where 32 persons were tortured and murdered. They also recounted violent acts committed between August 1981 and December 1986, which included extrajudicial executions, torture, forced disappearances, rapes, failures to provide aid and assistance, unlawful detentions and forced labor, all to the detriment of the members of the village of Chichupac and neighboring communities. 10. According to the petitioners, all the acts were committed as part of a national policy of persecution and extermination being waged by the Guatemalan State and carried out by the National Army at the direction of various military governments against the members of the mayan indigenous peoples. They emphasized that the modus operandi of the members of the National Army and their collaborators was the same one used during the commission of other massacres elsewhere in the country. The practice was to assemble the victims in a confined space, then torture and murder them with machetes or by cutting their throats or shooting them. Women were raped and then forced to cook for the soldiers. Finally, the petitioners observed that the policy was also to pillage the communities, burn them down, then set up “model villages” where members of the communities could be kept under the State’s control. 1 IACHR, Report No. 144/10, Petition 1579-07, Admissibility, Residents of the Village of Chichupac and the Hamlet of Xeabaj, Guatemala.