V PRELIMINARY OBJECTION OF LACK OF COMPETENCE RATIONE TEMPORIS A. Arguments of the parties and of the Inter-American Commission 29. Without explicitly indicating that it was a “preliminary objection,” the State argued that the Inter-American Court lacks temporal jurisdiction to rule on “all” the human rights violations alleged in this case, because the said violations occurred from 1980 to 1982; in other words, before Guatemala had accepted the Court’s contentious jurisdiction, and because the violations do not persist to this day and are not of a continuing nature. The State recalled that it had ratified the American Convention on Human Rights on May 25, 1978, but had accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Court on March 9, 1987. In addition, it indicated that the Court’s jurisdiction cannot be retroactive because, in the instrument accepting the Court’s jurisdiction, the State indicated that its acceptance was applicable to “cases that took place after the date [on] which this declaration is presented to the Secretary of the Organization of American States,” which was on March 9, 1987 (supra para. 15). The State repeated this objection during the public hearing (supra para. 9). However, the State also partially acknowledged its international responsibility with regard to some of the violations alleged by the Commission and the representatives (supra Chapter IV). 30. The Inter-American Commission stated, first and in general, that it had informed the Court of the “conducts of a continuing nature that persist after [March 9, 1987,] and the actions that constitute independent facts and that constitute specific and autonomous violations that took place after the acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction.” Therefore, in the Commission’s opinion, the Court has competence, “among other matters,” with regard to the following facts: the forced disappearances, the forced displacement, the violations of the personal integrity of the next of kin and survivors, the destruction of the community’s social fabric, the failure to identify the persons executed and disappeared, the consequent failure to bury them in keeping with Mayan traditions, the impossibility for the survivors to return to their lands, the lack of protection for the children, the accusation of being guerrillas, the social base of the guerrilla, internal enemies and subversives, discrimination, and the failure to conduct an impartial and effective investigation into the multiple violations that occurred during and after the massacres. 31. The Commission also indicated a second group of specific facts regarding which it considers that the Court has competence; namely, those referring to the “denial of justice in light of the procedural obligation derived from the obligation of guarantee, because the said violations fall within the Court’s temporal competence.” In this regard, it indicated that the Court has jurisdiction over: “the arbitrary detention, torture, rape, and extrajudicial execution […] of members of the Río Negro Community, the subsequent concealment of the bodies, and the subjection to slavery of some of the surviving children.” Therefore, in its observations on the preliminary objection filed by the State, the Commission asked the Court to rule, on the one hand, on “Articles 4, 5, 7, 9 and 19 of the American Convention, in relation to Article 1(1) thereof, to the detriment of the victims of the massacres” and, on the other hand, on “Articles 5 and 11 of the American Convention, in relation to Article 1(1) thereof, to the detriment of the victims of rape: J.O.S., V.C., M.T. and María Eustaquia Uscap Ivoy, and also on Article 19 of the Convention, in relation to Article 1(1), to the detriment of J.O.S. and María Eustaquia Uscap Ivoy.” 14