Thread: Human-rights group decries Fox's record

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/ ... -caribbean

Human-rights group decries Fox's record


President pins many failures on Congress


By Hector Tobar
Los Angeles Times

June 10, 2006


MEXICO CITY · The government of President Vicente Fox has lacked the political will to complete the ambitious program of human-rights reform it first proposed six years ago, according to a recent report by the group Human Rights Watch.

Elected in 2000 amid great hope for reform after ending the virtual one-party rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, Fox is leaving an incomplete legacy as he approaches the end of his six-year term, Human Rights Watch Executive Director Ken Roth said.

"We had very high expectations for the Fox administration," Roth said. "He did not show the leadership needed to see a historic effort such as this one completed."

In 2001, Fox appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the "dirty war" crimes committed by the Mexican government and military against dissidents in the 1960s and '70s. But the prosecutor has failed to win a single conviction.

To protect the rights of the accused, Fox proposed several key reforms to Mexico's judicial system in 2004. But like many other proposals, it died in Congress. Fox failed to expend the "political capital" to move the reform forward, the report said.

Torture and other forms of police and prosecutorial abuse remain common here, especially at the state and local levels, according to the report, titled "Lost in Translation: Bold Ambition, Limited Results for Human Rights Under Fox."

The Fox administration defended its record, and blamed Congress for failing to act on proposed legal reforms.

"Many of these problems could be resolved once the Congress approves the reforms proposed by the President," Fox spokesman Ruben Aguilar Valenzuela said. "We also think that we have made important advances in these past years."

The report noted that confessions obtained under torture remain admissible as evidence in criminal trials, giving police an "incentive" to abuse suspects. And the number of people jailed without possibility of bail on relatively minor charges has increased dramatically, the report said.

As part of a get-tough approach to rising crime, many nonviolent and relatively minor crimes have been re-classified as "serious," leaving suspects ineligible for release pending trial. In Yucatan state, for example, suspects charged with the illegal sale of alcoholic beverages can be held without bail. As a result of such laws, 40 percent of Mexico's jail and prison population is made up of people who have not been convicted of any crime, the report said.

The human-rights group's assessment of Fox was not entirely negative. Jose Miguel Vivanco, America's director for Human Rights Watch, praised the Fox administration and the Mexican Congress for adopting a government transparency law in 2002 that "is a model for the region."

That law gives the Mexican people more access than ever before to information about the federal branch of government. "This could be the most important legacy Fox leaves for Mexico," Vivanco said.

Fox raised expectations after he appointed a special prosecutor to investigate past human-rights abuses. Evidence uncovered by the inquiry led to the arrest and indictment of the former head of the secret police and three other security officials implicated in "dirty war" crimes.

"But these successes have been eclipsed by major setbacks," the report said. The special prosecutor has filed charges in only 15 of more than 600 cases of forced disappearance, a rate the group called "disappointing."

The president ordered Mexico's security services and military to release millions of pages of documents related to the "dirty war" in 2001. Millions of documents have been transferred to the National Archives here, but most are not indexed or cataloged, making it nearly impossible for researchers to find relevant material, the report said.

When Fox was elected in 2000, improving human rights and bringing to justice the military officers responsible for past crimes was a priority.

Now, as Mexico prepares to vote for Fox's successor this July, "human rights is absent from the political campaign," Vivanco said.

Here's a good example of human rights in Mexico. I sick of hearing Fox lecture us on human rights when they don't even exist in his country.

http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArt ... =N09174820

Amnesty sees systematic police abuse in Mexico riot
Fri 9 Jun 2006 1:19 PM ET
MEXICO CITY, June 9 (Reuters) - Mexican police brutally cracked down on townspeople after riots in a rebellious community outside Mexico City last month, arresting many without cause, beating them and likely raping women prisoners, Amnesty International said on Friday.

The rights group urged the government of President Vicente Fox to investigate police abuses in response to riots in San Salvador de Atenco in early May. The violence killed two people, including a 14-year-old boy who was shot and a university student who died this week from his injuries.

"A series of abuses took place, ranging from arbitrary detention to ill treatment and torture," Rupert Knox, a researcher for the London-based Amnesty, told Reuters after visiting Atenco and a jail where several residents await trial on various charges related to the riots.

"There seems to be a very strong indication of sexual abuse and rape of some of the women who were detained," Knox said.

Police arrested more than 200 people after violence exploded over officials' attempts to evict unlicensed flower sellers from a market in Atenco. Protesters threw Molotov cocktails at police and kidnapped several officers.

Television footage showed townspeople stamping on a fallen policeman. Amnesty and other rights group say crimes were committed on both sides but that the police crackdown was excessive.

So far no police face criminal charges, although more than 40 are under administrative investigation.

The clashes raised tension around the July 2 presidential race, prompting protests over the government response while the candidates accused each other of exploiting the episode.

Fox's spokesman said on Friday that the nation's attorney general would investigate only if asked to do so by local authorities. Knox and other rights leaders say local prosecutors and police have covered up the abuse.

"The manner in which the detentions were carried out was clearly indiscriminate," Knox said. "Atenco was intended to be targeted as a population. There was a clear strategy behind this, it wasn't something just a few police did."

Like Amnesty, Mexico's official rights watchdog and independent rights groups found evidence that police sexually abused or raped more than 20 women en route to jail.

Knox said local prosecutors scoffed at the women and other prisoners who tried to report abuse. Witnesses told Amnesty that guards withdrew when police arrived with the suspects, allowing police to beat them severely before turning them over.

Several still are recovering from injuries in jail, including one man who is disabled by a chronic disease and is using a wheelchair. He had five ribs broken and is accused of helping to orchestrate the kidnapping of police, Knox said.