Mexico’s long history of human rights issues
Concerns include torture by Mexican authorities, murders and disappearances
Claudia Medina Tamariz was sleeping in her home in the port city of Veracruz on a steamy August night in 2012 when they came for her. Two navy officers and several policemen broke down her door, smashing a hallway mirror. They grabbed her and her husband from their bed, blindfolded them, and rampaged through the apartment. “What do you want? Where is your search warrant,’ I asked them,” recounted Medina, 35. “They dragged me down the stairs, barefoot and in my pyjamas, put me in a van and drove me to the naval base near the airport.”
There, the naval officers tied her to a chair, threw water on her and tortured her with electric cables, shouting, “We know who you are. You are la Buena, la jefa, the head of narcotrafficking. Confess.”
She was charged with nine offences, including arms and drug trafficking crimes, and was forced to sign a false confession — “They threatened to go after my children if I didn’t sign it’’ — and paraded in front of Veracruz media, her prison mug shot broadcast everywhere.
Once in court, Medina retracted the confession and all charges were dropped, thanks to the intervention of Centro Prodh, a Mexican human rights organization, and of Amnesty International.
She and three other female human rights activists came to Ottawa this week, in advance of a visit by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who will arrive Monday for a state visit with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and for the North American Leaders summit with U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday.
The summit will focus on creating a more integrated and globally competitive North American economy, which already accounts for more than one-quarter of the world’s GDP. The three leaders will focus on trade and climate change, with Mexico expected to join Canada and the U.S. in regulating greenhouse gases.
Trudeau is expected to announce the revocation of a visa requirement for Mexican visitors.
The summit is not expected to include a discussion on human rights; however, the Amnesty International delegation wants the issue addressed. Killings, disappearances and torture by authorities have become critical problems in Mexico, highlighted by the disappearance and presumed murder of 43 students from a teacher’s college in southern Guerrero state in 2014 by local police and drug cartels.
A new report accuses the Mexican government of incorporating indiscriminate force and impunity into its policy in battling drug cartels. According to Open Society Justice Initiative, which authored the report, there is “overwhelming” evidence of crimes against humanity and that a disproportionate number of innocent people are being killed by security forces and/or organized crime. Open Society worked for three years with five independent human rights groups in Mexico to produce the report.
Pena Nieto, who is with the longruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), has rejected the report’s findings. He has blamed the killings on criminal organizations and drawn attention to the judicial reforms his government has introduced, as well as new laws to prevent torture and investigate disappearances.
A 2014 UN report found that torture in Mexico is “excessively related to obtaining coerced confessions,” said Pilar Arrese Alcala, with Centro Prodh, who travelled to Ottawa as part of the delegation. “Mexico is waging a war against the narcos, but in reality it has turned into a war against the people.”
According to the Mexican army’s own figures, for every soldier killed between 2007 and 2014, 19 civilians were killed, an indicator of the disproportionate use of lethal force.
Lawyer Brenda Rangel Ortiz, also a member of the delegation, is lobbying on behalf of the 27,000 Mexicans who have been forcibly “disappeared” in the past several years. She last saw her brother, Hector, on Nov. 10, 2009, when the 27-year-old student called to say the police had stopped him for speeding in Queretaro. “Authorities have done nothing to investigate,” said Rangel. “Anyone can disappear in Mexico, even foreigners. It’s like a horror movie, except it is real life.”
Mexicans voted the PRI out of office in seven state elections this month, including in Veracruz where the PRI had held power for 86 years.
Pena Nieto has introduced structural reforms in the telecommunications, energy and banking sectors since taking office in 2012. But he hasn’t solved the crucial problem of holding those who have committed crimes to account.