United States: Denounces impunity in Mexico for murders, torture, trafficking and other crimes

The United States denounced yesterday in its annual human rights report that Mexico left without investigating or prosecuting the majority of criminal cases such as homicides, torture, kidnappings, human trafficking and extortion.so the levels of violence and exploitation in the country remained high.

This is clear from the report of the US State Department which, in this edition, places homicides, torture, arbitrary detentions, drug trafficking, gender violence and violence against the collective among the country’s main problems in humanitarian matters. LGTBIQ+, among other aspects.

The publication concludes that there have been “no significant changes” in the human rights situation in Mexico and specifies that, in many parts of the country, organizations dedicated to human trafficking continue to act with collusion with local authorities.

In fact, international organizations and media reported cases of persecution of migrants and asylum seekers by criminal groups and in some cases also by police, immigration officials and customs agents.

On the other hand, The report highlights that freedom of expression suffers from “serious restrictions” in the country because “the official discredit” of journalists continued during the year.since different politicians, including the President of Mexico himself, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, publicly discredited and criticized them for being “biased, partisan and corrupt.”

The accusations of sexual abuse committed by the authorities during arrests and imprisonment is another of the topics exposed in the text.which highlights the fact that the Monitoring Mechanism for Cases of Sexual Torture against Women has new guidelines since March 2023.

One of the praises that the report includes in this area is the arrest by the authorities of the former director of the Judicial Police of Puebla, Adolfo karamaccused of torturing the popular journalist Lydia Chubfor exposing in 2005 the involvement of the former governor of said State, Mario Marín, in a network of sexual trafficking of minors.

Although the report points out that, in general, the Government took measures to “identify and punish” officials who may have committed human rights abuses, it also includes complaints from some organizations that work in the field and that ensure discredit to their work by Mexican authorities.

The universal

“That report is rubbish”

Last year, the publication of the report, which also questioned the issue of freedom of expression and warned of credible reports of arbitrary killings by police, military and other officials, sparked a fiery reaction from President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The President then assured that the report was nothing more than pure slander, and called it interventionist.

“In the State Department they don’t change. It is an old, anachronistic policy of wanting to get involved in the public life of other countries. With what law? “It is a flagrant violation of international law,” the President said at the time. He described the report as “rubbish… there is no basis, they use slander.”

The President rejected that torture or massacres had been committed in his Government and assured that in Mexico “freedom of expression is guaranteed, no one is persecuted, no one is repressed.”

Background curtain

Tortured women and immunity for agents in Tijuana

The confrontation during the hearing was brutal. On the one hand, an agent from the Attorney General’s Office of Baja California assured the judge that Denís Chávez Mariscal was lying, that he did not torture her.

Behind bars, dressed in the gray clothes of the Ensenada prison, Denís Chávez responded, pointing angrily at him: “If you were there, you had to have listened to me. Or were you one of those who hit me?” she shouted that December 29. April 2022.

For a few moments – just for those moments – the agent went from accuser to accused.

Already Since 2021, the State Human Rights Commission had delivered to the Prosecutor’s Office the names of agents involved in the sexual torture of Denís Chávez, all members of the Anti-Kidnapping Unit, but they were not the reason for this court date. In that confrontation, the person on trial was Denís Chávez, accused of participating with twelve other people in the kidnapping of a woman in Ensenada. Not that man or any of the agents involved in sexually torturing her eight years ago, when she was taken to testify before the Public Ministry. Despite advances in the law, torture is rarely punished in Mexico.

It was not until more than a year after that hearing, in September 2023, that Judge Martha Flores Trejo released Denís Chávez, acquitted due to lack of evidence. “The undersigned wishes to determine that the existence of physical and psychological torture is proven,” he also established in his ruling. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights celebrated her release with a statement; Its experts had insisted on reviewing the case since 2019. Denís Chávez spent nine years and six months in prison, his daughter’s entire childhood.

C.T.