Much Ado About Nothing On Mexican Human Rights

By: Gabriel Infante Carrillo

National and international human rights organizations alert that the situation on this issue in Mexico is extremely critical, but for government officials and for the Mexican Human Right Commission (CNDH) that doesn’t seems to take away the sleep.

Mexico was condemn again by Amnesty International on it’s annual report 2008, due to the “remained widespread and in some states systematic” on human rights violations. The report also states that the majority of those responsibles continue to evade justices; excessive police force to disperse demonstrators on various occasions, injuring a number of protesters; human rights abuses in the state of Oaxaca are still reported; military personnel performing police tasks killed several people and committed other serious human rights violations; journalists and human rights activists killed and other threatened; authorities in several parts of the country have misused the judicial system to subject political and social activist to unfair prosecution; indigenous communities and other disadvantaged groups, such as migrants, continued to face discrimination, due to the lack of access to basic services and the inexistent genuine consultation over development project, which has aggravated the inequalities and led to conflict; violence against women are still widespread and most of the victims have been denied effective access to justice.

The reaction of the government toward the report of Amnesty International was not a surprise, at least for me, the General Attorney, Eduardo Medina Mora, came out to the media to simply say “ it’s quite venture to say that in Mexico human rights are violated”. The attitude of the federal government toward this issue is quite the same as the Mexican Human Rights Commission (CNDH) that constantly denies and discredits reports and recommendations from serious and prestigious international ONG’s, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and United Nations.

The hypocrisy of the Mexican government signing international agreements on this issue and as Jorge Zepeda Patterson, economist, sociologist and columnist points out “with the confidences to violate their commitments within their boarder, even if they have the need to put pressure to expel international ONG’s officials from the country that shows the incongruity of the government actions”, and evidence of this was the case of Amerigo Incalcaterra, who was the representative of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights of the United Nations in Mexico, who was expelled from the country. According to versions, Mr. Incalcaterra expulsion was due to presumably pressured by the government of President Calderón, as result of his criticism of the use of the army in the fight against the organized crime, as well as his timely appointment on human rights violations, and since his arrival to the country on October 2005, he strongly criticized the federal government for it’s omissions and mistakes in human rights issues.

Édgar Cortez, member of “Red Nacional de Organismos de Derechos Humanos: Derechos para Todas y Todos”, a Mexican Human Rights ONG, also agrees with Jorge Zepeda Patterson by saying: “Sadly this is the profile of a government who has neglect to human rights and maintain a discourse and work in international forums much in favor, but on the domestic side it’s all the contrary and inclusive contributes for it’s exacerbation”. (Proceso #1647)

On the other hand, José Luis Soberanes, president of the Mexican Human Rights Commission (CNDH), seems to have had a decisive role on this action, by declaring that the High Commissioner of Human Rights of the United Nations in Mexico was expelled from the country, after he “attempted” to stay with the funds of the Merida Initiative. The accusation of Soberanes, as Jorge Zepeda Patterson points out on his opinion column of June 1st 2008 and published on “El Universal” newspaper, seems more as a desperate reaction and with the desire to justify himself, after it was known that he was the one who requested the government to take off from his back this ONG official, which has put on evidence the ineffectiveness, if not the complicity of the CNDH.

Jorge Zepeda Patterson, also points out, that it seems that there is a pact between Soberanes and the Secretary of State. The objective of this is that the CNDH will ignore the human rights violations committed by the army, while the Secretary of State will minimize and disable the international ONG’s reports that points out the ineffectiveness of the CNDH. It seems that this pact was pull off since the case of Ernestina Acesencio Rosario, indigenous woman murdered by members of the army in the Sierra de Zongolica in the state of Veracruz, when the CNDH position gave a radical change and short time later the case was closed.

The executive director of Human Right Watch, Keneth Roth, demanded to president Felipe Calderón and his government, in a letter, to clarify to the public opinion, which were the circumstances that lead to Mr. Incalcaterra to leave the country. In that letter also state that “any intervention of the Mexican government on the work of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights in Mexico would represent an alarming regression to the exterior policy that has been developing since the year 2000”. I would just add to this statement the following: not only would represent a regression to the exterior policy, but also the quality of the incipient Mexican democracy, that the former president Vicente Fox bragged a lot to the Mexican society and to the world.

Force disappearance and torture in Calderón’s government

In 1968, with the student political movement, the Mexican society got a glimpse of the totalitarian regime of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), and the atrocity committed by the army and the “Halcones”, a group of civilians well train to kill and torture, are well documented in the book titled “The Night of Tlatelolco” of the Mexican- Polish journalist Elena Poniatowska. The title makes reference to the night of the students massacre on October first of that same year, in the “Plaza de Las Tres Culturas” in the neighborhood of Taltelolco in Mexico City. This kind of practice continued in the 1970’s with the so call “Guerra Sucia” where political prisoners were tortured, murdered and disappeared; these crimes are still unpunished, and Amnesty International also point this out on it’s report.

The Mexican society though it had overcome this totalitarian practices and that it was left in our dark past, but it seems that this kind of inhuman and anti-democratic practices are back, but now in the hands of a government that comes from a political party who fought against this totalitarian practices of the PRI era, that governed the country for more the seven decades.

In the time being of president Calderón administration, the reemerge of torture and forces disappearances came with the so call “war against the organized crime”, an action implemented to fight against the drug cartels. For Édgar Cortez, member of “Red Nacional de Organismos de Derechos Humanos: Derechos para Todas y Todos”, declared to the weekly magazine “Proceso” published on may 25th 2008, that this is serious because this means the return of crimes against humanity. An example of this is the case of Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Cruz Sánchez, presume to be members of the Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR), an insurgent group, whom disappeared on may 25th 2007. Mr. Édgar Cortaz also pointed out that the violations of human rights presented more frequently are the aggression towards journalists. According to information from the CNDH last year they were murdered four journalists and three more were reported as disappeared. Since the arrival to power of the National Action Party (PAN) in 2000, thirty-five journalists were executed and other six went missing. None of these cases have been clarified.

Since the war against the organized crime began, it's estimated that more then 25 thousands soldiers and federal police agents were deployed on strategic points of the country to fight the drug cartels. The performances of the army has been criticized for the murder of civilians on checkpoints and for the raping of women in some of its military operations. For example, on May 2nd 2007, in a military operation in Nocupétaro in the State of Michoacán, four teenagers whom worked in a bar, where kidnapped, drugged and raped in a Military Headquarter in the XXI Military Zone.

On June 1st 2007 in the small town La Joya, municipality of Sinaloa de Leyva, a group of soldiers fired against a family van, the result of this, five persons were killed, among the victims they were two children and three more were injured; 19 soldiers are being prosecuted for this event. Two days later, on the highway that goes from Mier to Nuevo Laredo, in the State of Tamaulipas, the soldiers on a checkpoint fired against a vehicle that didn’t attend to the stop indication. In the incident died Héctor Adrián Salazar Hernández of age 27.

Cases like these are thousands, it would be difficult to mention them all in this article, that’s why I will continue this series of articles in the coming weeks. In the next article I would tackle with more details on forces disappearances.

Foto: José Luis Soberanes, president of the CNDH

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