Serving as a bloodhound to find your own son’s grave in Guerrero

El Daily Post (Originally in Spanish on Animal Political): Back in the ’70s, when he was younger, Guadalupe Contreras learned the profession he still practices today — tomb-building, grave-digging and the manufacturing and installation of headstones.

But starting about a year ago, Guadalupe has taken a day off from his graveside pursuits to become something else — related, but very different.

Every Sunday, Don Lupe, as his friends refer to him, grabs a machete, a hammer and a hat and goes out to the hills around Iguala to look for graves.

He’s not looking for the kinds of graves he normally works with — with headstones, crosses or the name of the deceased. The kind he’s hunting for are usually found in clandestine growing fields, in gaps in the terrain, in brushy areas or abandoned sites. They’re graves, in other words, where many of the disappeared victims of organized crime are buried. Read more.

Mexico Federal Police open to probe on use of excessive force

Reuters: Mexico's Federal Police is open to an investigation into its possible use of excessive force, particularly in two incidents this year that claimed the lives of dozens of people, police chief Enrique Galindo said on Thursday.

Mexico's National Human Rights Commision (CNDH) on Wednesday said six people died unlawfully after police were excessive in their efforts to restrain a group of protesters in the violence-wracked city of Apatzingan in Michoacan state. Read more.

Doctors from Cuba and Costa Rica Examine Comatose Mexican Student

Latin American Herald Tribune: Two foreign neurologists have examined Aldo Gutierrez, an education student who has been in a coma since he and several classmates were shot in Iguala, a city in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, in September 2014, the Executive Commission for Assisting Victims, or CEAV, said Tuesday.

Calixto Machado, of the Cuban Neurology and Neurosurgery Institute, and Costa Rican neurologist Mauricio Chinchilla examined the comatose student last Friday, the CEAV said. Read more.

Behind Ciudad Juarez’s New Labor Movement

FNS News: In a virtually unprecedented development, labor protest is widening in the maquiladora industry of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. While worker dissatisfaction or protest is nothing new in the foreign-owned border factories that produce goods for export to the United States, previous manifestations of discontent in the generally union-free industry have usually been confined to one company at a time.

But recently, movements for better pay and working conditions- and union representation- have emerged at four different companies-Foxconn, Lexmark, ADC/Commscope and Eaton. Hundreds of workers have participated in street protests, hunger strikes and leafleting. Read more.

Mexican AG's office apologizes to parents for 12-year-old migrant's death

EFE: The Mexican Attorney General’s Office publicly apologized to an Ecuadorian couple for the March 2014 death of their 12-year-old daughter at a children’s shelter in the northern state of Chihuahua.

The deputy attorney general for human rights, crime prevention and community services, Eber Omar Betanzos Torres, “addressed some words to the parents,” who live in the United States, at the Consulate General of Ecuador in New York, the AG’s office said in a statement Tuesday.

Files for lawsuit against CIA stolen in ‘suspicious’ break-in at UW

Seattle Times: University of Washington police are investigating a break-in at the offices of the director of the school’s Center for Human Rights after a computer and hard drive containing sensitive information about a recent lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency were stolen.

The center says that the office of Angelina Godoy was burglarized sometime between Thursday and Sunday. Godoy reported that the hard drive contained “about 90 percent of the information” relating to research in El Salvador that is the foundation of a freedom-of-information lawsuit the center filed Oct. 2 against the CIA. Read more. 

THE POWER OF CONSCIENCE: The US Military and the Myth that Humanity is Predisposed to Violence

Editor's Note: This is an important read that is relevant to the Americas Program's critique of US funding and training in Latin America and the downward spiral of violence this causes. 

Other Worlds: We have this tragic misperception that humanity is predisposed to violence.

The truth is that humanity is predisposed to peace. The default position for humanity is that of conscientious objector to war and violence.

Mexico, U.S. Examine Use of Force on Border

Hispanic Business: Mexican and U.S. officials met to discuss the use of force by U.S. federal agents on the border in an effort to reduce violent incidents during the apprehension of migrants, the Foreign Relations Secretariat said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske, U.S. Border Patrol officials and U.S. Embassy personnel participated in the meeting, the secretariat said.  Read more. 

'Nobody's Children' at the Mexico-U.S. Border (La Prensa, Honduras)

WorldMeets (La Prensa): The tears of those now in government, who listen to the stories of children who have made it to the United States in search of a better life, are tears of hypocrisy. Such stories have been known for over two decades, starting when an easy solution could have been found to a problem that now seems to constrain some people's souls. The distressing phenomenon of migrant children was reported by Casa Alianza over 20 years ago, but there has never been the political will on the part of any government.

What compels migrant children to undertake the perilous journey is the certainty that they would die of hunger or violence if they remained in homes stricken by a poverty that killed their parents and forced them emigrate. It is despair over a promised future that was never fulfilled. Making the trip puts their lives at risk, but there is hope of getting through, whereas to stay means being resigned to die. Read more. 

UN Human Rights Visitor Comments On Torture In Mexico

Justice in Mexico Project
May 31, 2014

Following his visit to Mexico in April, Juan E. Méndez, special rapporteur on torture for the United Nations, expressed concern that there is a “generalized situation” of torture in Mexico, that needs to be addressed. Méndez, who is from Argentina, was in Mexico from April 21 through May 2 investigating the increase in allegations of torture in Mexico as part of a review of the country’s protocols and protection mechanisms for human rights. He engaged in over 100 meetings with officials and representatives at the local, state, and federal levels, and visited prisons, migration centers, and psychiatric hospitals in the Federal District (Distrito Federal, DF), Nuevo León, Baja California, Chiapas, and Nayarit. Méndez’s assessment and evaluations will assist in developing plans to prevent, investigate, and sanction the practices of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment. Read more.

At Vatican, Obama's Immigration Hypocrisy Shines Through (La Jornada, Mexico)

La Jornada – Original Article (Spanish)

Translated By Acosta-Florizul Perez for WorldMeetUs

April 1, 2014

In the meeting last week at the Vatican between U.S. President Barack Obama and Pope Francis, the two heads of state addressed the issue of our northern neighbor's immigration policy, issuing a call to "eradicate the trafficking of human beings around the world," to work so that "international and humanitarian law is respected within conflict zones," and to seek "negotiated solutions."

Bearing in mind the upsurge in persecutions of undocumented immigrants and the consequent violations of human rights during Obama’s terms in office, such declarations constitute an act of hypocrisy on his part. It must be remembered that the current U.S. president has not only shown a reluctance to abandon his country's traditional policies of persecution and violations of human rights regarding immigration, but he has continuously intensified them. Proof of this is the fact that his government has deported more than two million undocumented immigrants, nearly 140,000 this year alone, the highest figure on record, behind which are so many untold stories of personal and family suffering.  Read more.

Mexico: Key Supreme Court Ruling on Torture Case

Human Rights Watch 
November 7, 2013

(Washington, D.C.) – A Mexican Supreme Court ruling on November 6, 2013,  affirms the Mexican constitutional principle that evidence obtained through torture or other violations of fundamental human rights is inadmissible, Human Rights Watch said today.

The court ordered the immediate release of Israel Arzate Meléndez. He was arbitrarily detained by the military in 2010, tortured to confess to taking part in a multiple homicide, and held for more than three years in preventive detention while he awaited trial. The Supreme Court has yet to publish the grounds for reaching this decision, and so its scope remains uncertain.

“The Supreme Court’s ruling is a long-overdue acknowledgment by the government that Israel Arzate’s confession was obtained in violation of his rights and should never have been allowed as evidence,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Beyond freeing Israel, the court should use the ruling to affirm a clear and unequivocal prohibition on the use of torture-tainted evidence in Mexico’s justice system.”  Read more. 

Mexico: Conduct Federal Investigation Into Activists’ Killings

Human Rights Watch 
June 20, 2013

(Washington, D.C.) – Mexico’s federal prosecutors should conduct a thorough and impartial investigation into the killing of three political activists in Guerrero state, including examining allegations against government officials, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should offer robust protection for survivors of the attack and their families.

The victims, all members of an organization that campaigns on behalf of peasant farmers and marginalized communities, were abducted along with five fellow activists on May 30, 2013. The previous day, 11 members of the organization had filed a formal complaint with the Guerrero state prosecutor’s office, expressing the fear that the mayor and the police chief of Iguala municipality might have them killed in retaliation for their activities, according to documents obtained by Human Rights Watch.  Read more. 

Mexico Pursuing Vanished Victims of Its Drug Wars

NOTE: Be sure to take a look at the comment section on this article. The overwhelming majority of the comments come out against the drug war and U.S. prohibitionist policies. Many disagree with the headline, saying these are U.S., not Mexican, drug wars. I posted the following comment:

"The bloodshed and the breakdown of law in Mexico is directly caused by the US-backed drug war. The government has spent more than $2 billion taxpayer dollars on escalating the violence in Mexico under the "Merida Initiative". I´m a US citizen who has lived in Mexico many years, and I'm convinced that instead of saying "poor Mexico" we should demand that our Congress cut off the funds to the same corrupt police and military that are often responsible for these disappearances, end the Merida Initiative and send this money to our schools and communities." LC

New York Times: Rosa González cannot shake the memory of the state investigator who was too afraid of reprisals to take a full report, the police officer who shrugged when the ransom demand came, the months of agonizing doubt and, most of all, the final words from her daughter before she disappeared.

“I am giving you a hug because I love you so much,” her mentally disabled daughter, Brizeida, 23, told Rosa hours before she was abducted with her 21-year-old cousin after a party more than two years ago.

In thousands upon thousands of cases, the story may well have ended there, adding to the vast number of Mexicans who have disappeared. Unlike those in other Latin American countries who were victims of repressive governments, many of Mexico’s disappeared are casualties of the organized-crime and drug violence that has convulsed this nation for years. Read more...

Advocates for Press Freedoms Take Action for Slain US Reporter Brad Will

For Immediate Release

(Houston, May 1) Advocates for press freedom and human rights are pressuring President Obama to remember murdered US journalist, Brad Will, who was slain in broad daylight by Mexican government-backed paramilitaries over six years ago. They issued an 'Action Alert' today, for people who shared their concern with the impunity with which the murder of a US journalist has been greeted in Mexico, to contact senior Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont. The alert urged Senator Leahy to ask the President, on his trip to Mexico this week, to "raise to Mexican President Nieto publicly the lack of sound prosecution of the shooters who murdered Brad Will and . . .(to) insist that accountability for his murder, and the murder of other journalists, mostly Mexican, who had, before they were killed, been publishing stories of corruption and brutality by top Mexican government officials, be achieved promptly".

Senator Leahy was instrumental in inserting a requirement for an investigation into Brad Will's murder in earlier appropriations for Plan Mexico, a militarization package that has poured guns and other lethal aid into the Mexican military and police, forces that are widely seen as unaccountable, corrupt and which systematically abuse human rights. The resulting violence has contributed to the estimated 100,000 murders of civilians many of whom were innocent bystanders uninvolved in the drug trade.

As the Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, Senator Leahy has the power to influence President Obama's discussions with President Nieto of Mexico, a major recipient of US military aid.

Brad Will was murdered in broad daylight over six years ago. There were many witnesses. Mexican government officials, at least four of them, were identified as the shooters. Yet only two were questioned by the Mexican prosecutor's office and both let go without charge.

Illegal Immigration: Cruelty, Xenophobia and U.S. Business (La Jornada, Mexico)

"The criminalization of undocumented migration in the United States and the violations of human rights that accompany it, is a strategy that results in enormous political, economic and corporate profit, the very existence of which contradicts the founding principles of that country."

Editorial
La Jornada 
Translated By Halszka Czarnocka
WorldsMeet.us

April 4, 2013

According to official reports divulged by The New York Times, some 300 undocumented migrants a day are subject to solitary confinement in U.S. prisons on orders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE for short). This happens in spite of the fact that such people have not been jailed for criminal offences, but for civil ones, which under the laws of our neighboring country, don't even merit punishment. Their detentions are a means of ensuring that they appear at administrative hearings. Out of this figure, half, or some 150, are kept in solitary confinement for 75 days or more, which according to psychiatric experts cited by the newspaper, multiplies the risk of severe mental damage for the detainees.

Beyond the intrinsic cruelty of laws currently in force in our neighboring country under which migrants are persecuted - laws that criminalize foreigners for coming to the U.S. in search of work or a better life than what their countries of origin offer - inhumane practices like this one have various contextual elements that must be examined. Read more.

Nobel Laureates to OAS leaders: "Vitally important to strengthen" the Inter-American Human Rights System

Ed: The OAS is meeting today to decide on measures to reform the Inter-American Human Rights System. The Nobel Women's Initiative, JASS, Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres in Nicaragua and other Americas Program partners have been active to preserve the vital functions of the Inter-American Commission and Court on Human Rights that have been important in exposing violations and protecting human rights defenders. The Permanent Council was stuck on language about non-governmental funding to the System after a long series of meetings this week and last, but a meeting of nations that have signed the American Convention on Human Rights (San José Pact) agreed to remove proposals that would have seriously weakened the System. 

A group of center-left governments led by Ecuador objected to aspects of the precautionary measures and sentences against their governments. They have accused the U.S. of exercising excessive control over the operations of the system and argued that States that have not signed the Pact should not have representation on the Commission. The U.S. and Canada, among others, have not signed the regional human rights commission and  that lack of basic commitment to the System undermines regional efforts to guarantee human rights. Civil society organization and especially women's organizations that we work with have responded saying that the flaws should be addressed by strengthening, not weakening, the system. The draft resolutions call on all nations to sign the Pact and governments to fund all Rapporteurs adequately and equally.

Here is the press release and letter issued yesterday from Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchu, from the Nobel Women's Initiative.

Nobel Women's Initiative: On the eve of a deadline for defining the future of the Inter-American human rights system, six Nobel Peace Laureates have sent an open letter to leaders in this hemisphere calling on them to strengthen both the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Tomorrow members of the Organization of American States (OAS) will be presenting proposals for reforming the regional justice system created in 1948, and which primarily oversees compliance with the American Convention on Human Rights adopted in 1969.

In their open letter to OAS leaders, the six Nobel Laureates—Jody Williams, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Shirin Ebadi, Leymah Gbowee, Mairead Maguire and Tawakkol Karman—note that the Inter-American Human Rights System has "proven to be an effective tool" for defending the basic rights of women and others threatened by rising levels of violence in some places in the region. They say the OAS mechanisms have been important in giving "voice and protection" to women and others at-risk.

The Nobel Laureates sent the letter in response to concerns from human rights groups in the region that some countries within the OAS are trying to weaken the power and effectiveness of the Inter-American Human Rights System. In 2011, Nobel Laureates Rigoberta Menchú Tum and Jody Williams led a delegation to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to investigate rising violence against women human rights defenders. The delegation heard testimony from women and organizations that had turned to the Inter-American Human Rights System after hitting walls in their own countries.

"It was really important that the Inter-American Court took [our] case," said Imelda Marrufo, whose organization denounced rising femicides in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.  "Authorities [in Mexico] were calling the femicides a 'myth'. The case led to the formal recognition that the killings existed."

Last week the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights heard the case of 11 women from Atenco, Mexico who were sexually assaulted by police in 2006 when Mexico's current President—Enrique Peña Nieto—was Governor of the state where the assaults occurred. A day after the Inter-American hearing got started in Washington, the Mexican government finally offered the women of Atenco a "friendly solution" to the case. The "solution" includes a public apology and reparations for the psychological and other damage caused by the sexual assaults.

The women of Atenco have since rejected the Mexican government's offer, instead opting to move forward with their case. "We are never going to be victims," said one of the Atenco women. "We are survivors full of hope."

Read the full text of the open letter below.

For more information, please contact:
Rachel Vincent, Media Manager
Nobel Women's Initiative
rvincent@nobelwomensinitiative.org
Mobile +1 613 276 9030

STRENGTHEN INTER-AMERICAN HUMAN RIGHTS SYSTEM

An Open Letter from Nobel Peace Laureates to All Member States of the Organization of American States

On the eve of the Extraordinary General Assembly on March 22, 2013, we are writing to call on all member states of the Organization of American States (OAS) to join together to strengthen the Inter-American Human Rights System.

The Inter-American Human Rights System—made up of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court on Human Rights—has proven to be an effective tool for the defense of basic rights, especially for groups that face discrimination in the justice system: women, indigenous peoples, Afro-Americans, migrants and displaced persons, members of the LGBT community, leaders of political opposition and the poor. The System also plays a critical role in cases where state actors are in complicity or directly involved in committing human rights violations.

The Inter-American Human Rights System has protected women human rights defenders and survivors of violence by making the work of such defenders visible, investigating complaints and contributing to prevention.  This is vital work in a region where threats against some women and their communities are a daily fact of life.

At this juncture in history—when human rights are all too often taking a back seat to corporate and other interests—the goal should be to broaden and strengthen the System and ensure full funding for its important functions.  This support should extend to all eight of the thematic Rapporteurs and the country Rapporteurs.

We urge the member states that have not ratified the Convention to do so as soon as possible to send a strong signal that human rights are a priority. We also strongly encourage the member nations to strengthen the system by fully and promptly complying with the recommendations and decisions of the Commission and the Court, and contributing to funding their operations at an adequate level.

The Inter-American Human Rights System has given voice to and protection to human rights defenders throughout the region, as well as at-risk populations.  At this critical moment in it development, we call on all OAS countries to reaffirm their commitment and support for the important work of the Inter-American Rights System.

Respectfully,

Jody Williams
Chair, Nobel Women's Initiative
Nobel Peace Laureate, 1997

Rigoberta Menchu Tum
Nobel Women's Initiative
Nobel Peace Laureate, 1992

An Ugly Truth in the War on Drugs

The NY Times 
By Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Ruth Dreifuss
Published: March 10, 2013

This week, representatives from many nations will gather at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna to determine the appropriate course of the international response to illicit drugs. Delegates will debate multiple resolutions while ignoring a truth that goes to the core of current drug policy: human rights abuses in the war on drugs are widespread and systematic.

Consider these numbers: Hundreds of thousands of people locked in detention centers and subject to violent punishments. Millions imprisoned. Hundreds hanged, shot or beheaded. Tens of thousands killed by government forces and non-state actors. Thousands beaten and abused to extract information, and abused in government or private “treatment” centers. Millions denied life-saving medicines. These are alarming figures, but campaigns to address them have been slow and drug control has received little attention from the mainstream human rights movement.

This is a perfect storm for people who use drugs, especially those experiencing dependency, and those involved in the drug trade, whether growers, couriers or sellers. When people are dehumanized we know from experience that abuses against them are more likely. We know also that those abuses are less likely to be addressed because fewer people care.  Read more. 

Mexico's disappeared

LA Times
Editorial
March 5, 2013

The full human cost of Mexico's bloody drug war during the last six years is only now becoming apparent. Nearly 70,000 people died and more than 26,000 went missing between 2006 and 2012. A scathing new report by Human Rights Watch casts substantial blame for the problem on the country's security forces, which it says have not only been implicated in many of the underlying crimes but have failed to adequately investigate claims by friends and family members of the victims. The result, the report says, is the "most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades."

Human Rights Watch researchers looked into a few hundred cases and confirmed 149 examples of enforced disappearances by security forces. They described a pattern in which uniformed soldiers or police detain people without arrest orders or probable cause — at their homes, in front of family members, at checkpoints or in public settings. The arrests are almost never officially registered and the arrestees are not turned over to the prosecutor's office, as required by law. When relatives arrive to ask about the detainees, the report said, "they are told that the detentions never took place."

These are familiar allegations. But Human Rights Watch also shows how the authorities fail to follow up or investigate — declining to trace cellphones or obtain footage from security cameras or track the bank transactions of the disappeared.  Read more. 

Mexico's 'Crisis Of Disappearance': Families Seek Answers

NPR by Carrie Kahn

February 21, 2013

Maximina Hernandez says she begged her 23-year old son, Dionicio, to give up his job as a police officer in a suburb of Monterrey. Rival drug cartels have been battling in the northern Mexican city for years.

But he told her being a police officer was in his blood, a family tradition. He was detailed to guard the town's mayor.

In May 2007, on his way to work, two men wearing police uniforms stopped Dionicio on a busy street, pulled him from his car and drove him away. That same day, the mayor's other two bodyguards were also abducted. Witnesses say the kidnappers wore uniforms of an elite anti-drug police unit. The three men haven't been seen since.  Read more.