Torture haunts Mexico despite laws against it
When Juan Carlos Soni Bulos heard his front door being smashed one November morning, he frantically scrolled through his phone to call for help.
Outside the human rights activist’s bedroom window, a Mexican marine in a black mask and helmet trained a rifle on him. “Drop the phone or I’ll shoot,” he said.
The marines blindfolded him, bound him and took him with four relatives and friends to a dimly lit, windowless warehouse.
Then hours of torture began, Soni says, beatings, electric shocks, asphyxiation, sexual abuse. He heard his teenage nephew scream as they applied electric shocks to the boy’s ribs.
Soni’s tormenter said, “This is going to make you not want to defend rights anymore.”
In the face of strong international condemnation, Mexico says it is taking steps to stop the use of torture by its security forces.
However, there is still widespread impunity around the use of torture by security forces. From December 2006 through October 2014, the Attorney General’s Office registered 4,055 complaints of torture, nearly one-third of them against the military.
Yet over almost the same period, only 13 police and soldiers were sentenced for torture. Nobody has been charged in Soni’s case.
Also, one in five reports on torture cases filed by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission between 1994 to 2014 were against marines, according to the non-profit Mexican Commission for the Defence and Promotion of Human Rights.
But none of those sentenced over roughly the past decade were marines.
Soni had far more resources than most victims
For many years there were police forces that considered torture as an investigative method. Roberto Campa
of torture. He had a politically active family and connections in the human rights world. In the late 1990s, he worked as an international human rights observer for the United Nations in Guatemala. When he returned to Mexico, he continued to work in the indigenous communities of the Huasteca region.
Nov 9, 2013, was not the first time marines visited his home in central Mexico’s San Luis Potosi state.
On June 22, 2013, Soni was driving home from teaching when his sister called to tell him to stay away; marines and federal police were at the house.
That day they grabbed Luis Enrique Biu Gonzalez, Soni’s gardener, who also lived at his home. They beat him and asphyxiated him with a plastic bag, Biu says.
Soni does not know exactly why the marines targeted him. It could have been the human rights complaints he helped people file against them and other security forces in the area. Or somebody with influence might have perceived him as a political threat.
Soon after the June raid, Soni sought advice from his contacts at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. They told him to get help from the Mexican government’s protection programme.
Soni was enrolled in the programme as of June 26, 2013, government records show. He had assurances from the Attorney-General’s Office there would be no more trouble. The government programmed an emergency “panic” number into his cell phone.
“It gave me some peace of mind,” he recalls thinking. The day he was taken, Soni was trying to find the panic number. It was too late.
Mexico’s Interior Department deputy secretary for human rights, Roberto Campa, said eradicating the use of torture is a top human rights priority for the government, and he expects to see a significant increase in sentences against those responsible. He also noted that under Mexico’s new justice system, evidence obtained through torture is thrown out.
“For many years there were police forces that considered torture as an investigative method,” he said.
At times through tears, Soni and the others recounted what happened to them in the garden of his home, now surrounded by a tall fence and numerous surveillance cameras paid for by the government.
Soni said the marines beat him, gave him electrical shocks and did things he does not want published.
“(They did) everything, everything.” — AP