Four journalists in the Lagunera region of northern Mexico have disappeared just days after the revelation of a major corruption story. According to a press release by the National Human Rights Commission, the missing journalists include a reporter from Multimedios, two cameramen from the Gómez Palacio Televisa affiliate who were “picked up” (or “levantado”) in broad daylight around noon on Monday the 26th. The fourth missing reporter works for the El Vespertino newspaper in Gómez Palacio and disappeared around 11pm or the same day.
This comes in the wake of a corruption scandal in which prison guards in Gómez Palacios, Durango allegedly released and armed convicts to carry out mass murder in Torreón, Chihuahua. The two sister cities are one metropolitan area separated by a river which marks the state line.
Federal police investigators dropped this bombshell in a weekend press conference after looking into the July 18th massacre of 17 people at a birthday in a hotel. Eighteen people were wounded in the same attack. This was the third such massacre this year thought to have been committed by inmates released from the state penitentiary in Gómez Palacios. Crime scene shell casings were traced to assault rifles used by guards at the prison.
The four missing journalists aren’t the only victims in the scandal’s immediate fall out. A prison guard has been killed and 8 human heads have been found around the city of Durango, capital of the state of the same name.
Tags: Drug War, human rights, impunity, Mexico, press freedom
Mexico’s Supreme Court has issued another blow to government transparency when it comes to human rights. The latest ruling comes less than one week after the high court limited the legal scope of the country’s publicly-funded human rights commissions.
In a 7 to 4 vote, the Supreme Court upheld a recently reformed internal policy of the Attorney General’s office that limits the National Human Rights Commission’s access to case files. The wording of the new policy allows the Mexican equivalent of the Justice Department to deny human rights investigators access to information that could “put ongoing investigations or the security of persons at risk”. The Attorney General’s Office itself will determine which case files meet the criteria for denial.
The National Human Rights Commission argued the policy restricting their oversight of the federal law enforcement agency was unconstitutional. The Commission published a report earlier this month in which the Attorney General’s Office ranked second only to the Armed Forces in citizen complaints of human rights abuses.
Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling is the second in as many weeks to restrict the scope of the federally-funded human rights ombudsman’s office. Last week, the high court ruled that the National Human Rights Commission can only cite the Constitution – and not international law – in legal challenges.
(From the March 10, 2010 broadcast of Free Speech Radio News)
Tags: human rights, impunity, Mexico
Mexico’s Supreme Court has handed down a ruling that greatly restricts the country’s publicly-funded human rights institutions. The sweeping 7 to 4 ruling prevents Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission and its state-level counterparts from challenging laws that violate or may violate human rights provisions in international treaties signed by the country. The court determined that governmental human rights institutions can only seek to annul laws that violate Mexico’s constitution.
Non-governmental groups can still work on human rights cases based on international law, but the exclusion of publicly-funded institutions from this type of work is significant.
The founding of government-funded human rights institutions in Mexico was a requirement of the North American Free Trade agreement – or NAFTA. Supporters of NAFTA often cited this “watchdog” requirement to argue that the trade agreement would improve the human rights situation in Mexico.
Tags: human rights, Mexico
