Mexican torture ‘out of control’
Complaints have skyrocketed 600 per cent, Amnesty says
The use of torture by Mexican security forces is “out of control” and now constitutes a national crisis, according to human rights watchdog Amnesty International.
A report released by the organization this month found complaints of torture in Mexico have soared by 600 per cent in the past decade. Very few are ever investigated.
“It truly is a crisis,” said Alex Neve, secretary general of the organization’s Canadian chapter, who is in Mexico to draw attention to the report. “There’s no better word for it.”
The problem is concentrated along the troubled U.S.-Mexico border, said Neve, but affects all regions of the country to some degree.
Neve called on Ottawa to place more emphasis on human rights issues in its bilateral dealings with Mexico. “The Canadian government should be much more serious about this. We need to see Canada put this issue in front of the Mexican government,” “Out of Control: torture and other ill-treatment in Mexico,” highlights more than 20 individual cases of torture out of thousands of reported cases.
It places special emphasis on the plight of Angel Almicar Colon Quevedo, a Honduran migrant who spent five and a half years in detention on what the organization says is a trumped-up charge of belonging to a criminal organization.
Colon Quevedo confessed to the charge only after suffering brutal treatment, including being “beaten, asphyxiated using a plastic bag, stripped, forced to perform humiliating acts and was subjected to racist verbal abuse,” the report says.
“The torture happens in the early days,” said Neve. “It’s all about forcing confessions or forcing people to implicate others.”
This summer, Amnesty International declared the Honduran to be a prisoner of conscience and is pressing for his release when Mexico’s federal attorney general re-examines the case on Oct. 23.
Their report condemns “a prevailing culture of tolerance and impunity” that has grown up around torture and other abuses of power in Mexico.
“Only seven torturers have ever been convicted in federal courts,” the report says.