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which would appear to indicate that the purpose was precisely that the other protesters saw or
were aware of what happened to their women when they challenged the authority of the agents,
under a male chauvinist concept of women as a possession or object to be dominated in order to
crush the group they were trying to control.
204. Therefore, the Court concludes that, in this case, the police agents used the detained
women’s bodies as instruments to transmit their message of repression and condemnation of the
protest measures employed by the demonstrators. They objectified the women to humiliate,
dominate and instill fear in the voices of dissent against their powers of command. Sexual
violence was used as just one more weapon in the repression of the protest, as if, together with
the tear gas and the anti-riot gear, it was merely an additional tactic to achieve the purpose of
dispersing the protest and ensuring that the State’s authority was not challenged again. This type
of conduct in the maintenance of public order, more than reprehensible, is absolutely
unacceptable. Sexual violence has no place and should never be used as a way of controlling
public order by the law enforcement agents of a State bound by the American Convention, the
Convention of Belém do Pará and the Inter-American Convention against Torture to pursue “by all
appropriate means and without delay, policies to prevent, punish and eradicate” violence against
women.
B.2.d Medical violence
205. Meanwhile, both the Commission and the representatives alleged specific violations of
personal integrity, owing to the treatment received by the victims from the doctors when they
arrived at the prison.303 In this regard, The Court notes that several of the victims underlined the
denigrating treatment they received from the first doctors who attended them when they reached
the prison. For example: (i) Norma Aidé Jiménez Osorio recounted that the doctors refused to
perform a gynecological examination because there was no gynecologist, and to record or report
the rape, in addition to saying to her in a mocking way, “well, if you want, I will examine you, but
I’m not a gynecologist”; (ii) Bárbara Italia Méndez Moreno indicated that having to face the
“violence of the doctors was really devastating,” because she told them that she required medical
treatment owing to the sexual abuse and the doctors refused to treat her or examine her. She
indicated that they stitched up her head without cleaning the wound or giving her an anesthetic,
which caused her “really acute pain,” and that the doctors mocked her, and (iii) Claudia
Hernández Martínez underscored that she was taken to the infirmary in the early morning hours,
where she was mocked and insulted by one of the doctors who said to her: “I don’t believe that
anyone touched you, fucking old radicals! Filth!” She added that the doctor did not perform a
clinical examination and refused to provide her with gynecological treatment. She was then taken
to see a forensic physician who also refused to provide her with any type of treatment despite her
complaints (supra para. 104).
206. The Court has recognized how specific cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and even
torture may occur in the sphere of the health care services. 304 It has also stressed the important
In this regard, the Court notes that, according to the Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful
Acts drafted by the UN International Law Commission, the internationally wrongful act may not only be attributed to any
entity that is an organ of the State under its domestic law (Article 4), but also to any person or entity “empowered by the
law of that State to exercise elements of the governmental authority, […] provided the person or entity is acting in that
capacity in the particular instance” (Article 5). UN, General Assembly, Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful
Acts, A/RES/56/83, January 28, 2002.
303
Cf. Case of I.V. v. Bolivia. Preliminary objections, merits, reparations and costs. Judgment of November 30, 2016.
Series C No. 329, para. 263, and Case of V.R.P., V.P.C. et al. v. Nicaragua. Preliminary objections, merits, reparations and
costs. Judgment of March 8, 2018. Series C No. 350, paras. 174 to 177. See, similarly, UN, Report of the Special
304