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A woman from the Mayan villagers of Guatemala dared to raise her voice and file a case against a Canadian mining company whose employees assaulted and raped her then set her house ablaze, reported the New York Times.

The woman, who similar to her fellow sisters, lives in isolated areas in Guatemala remained silent for a long time but then she decided to break that silence and report what had happened to her.

According to the source, Mrs Caal stated that the men said they belonged to a Canadian mining company, allowed themselves to eat the meal she had prepared for her children, took turns raping her before they dragged her outside her small property and set it on fire.

She still lives in fear all the time, added the source.

She has filed a case against them in Canada.

“Mrs. Caal’s negligence claim and those of 10 other women from this village who say they were gang-raped that day in 2007, as well as two other negligence claims against Hudbay, have already passed several significant legal hurdles — suggesting that companies based in Canada could face new scrutiny about their overseas operations in the future,” read the report.

More than 50 percent of the world’s publicly listed exploration and mining companies had headquarters in Canada in 2013, many of which for decades have registered a long history of misbehavior including the evictions of indigenous people not to mention damaging the environment.

Mrs Caal’s case is being watched carefully because it appears to offer a new legal pathway for those who say they have suffered at the hands of Canadian subsidiaries.

Mrs. Caal said the armed men who attacked her during the eviction were so brutal with her that she could not get up from the spot where they had left her. But when her husband asked what had happened to her, she told him only that she had fallen, afraid of how he might react.

At the time of Mrs. Caal’s eviction, there was no mining anywhere near the area where she is in Lote Ocho, but mining officials moved to evict the villagers anyway. The area has no electricity, no schools for children and it takes a 45-minute ride to reach the nearest town.

The behavior of multinational companies working in poor countries has come under increasing fire in recent years.

A policy group in Washington called the Council on Hemispheric Affairs concluded in a 2014 report that Canadian companies, some 50 percent to 70 percent of the mining in Latin America, were often associated with extensive damage to the environment, from erosion and sedimentation to groundwater and river contamination. Of particular note, it said, was that the industry “demonstrated a disregard for registered nature reserves and protected zones.”

Most of the times, the lawyers of the victims have tried to get cases heard but to no avail, even though these were based on human rights and international law. Most victims, according to the report were told that Canada has no jurisdiction and that they should file their claims in the country where the assault took place even if that was dysfunctional.