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 Editorials | Issues | February 2008 
Mexico Human Rights Panel is Painted as a Failure
 Dudley Althaus - Houston Chronicle
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 |  | The (commission) should be a catalyst for human rights progress, not merely a chronicler of the status quo.
- Jose Miguel Vivanco |  | | | |
Mexico City — A leading international organization has charged that the government's human rights commission has proved largely impotent in preventing abuses of its citizens.
Human Rights Watch, the New York-based organization, said in a report that Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, a semi-autonomous body, has proved adept at criticizing violations of citizens' rights but has failed to halt or prevent the practices.
"The commission could have a much greater impact on human rights in Mexico, but it doesn't," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, the organization's director for the Americas. "While it does a decent job documenting abuses and identifying problems, it doesn't take crucial steps needed to bring about change."
"The (commission) should be a catalyst for human rights progress, not merely a chronicler of the status quo," Vivanco said.
The 128-page report, released Wednesday, documents the commission's alleged impotence in the investigations of recent abuses — including a police crackdown on leftist radicals in a village near Mexico City, the rapes and killings of villagers by troops in Michoacan and Coahuila states, and the unsolved murders of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez.
Too often, the report said, the commission's investigators merely recommend fixes to government agencies and then fail to check whether they are ever implemented. Back-room deals whose details remain obscured from the public are the norm, the study said.
The criticism did not surprise human rights advocates here. Indeed, the report merely served as "a well-made confirmation that exposes one of the tragedies of Mexico," said political scientist Sergio Aguayo, a founder of one of Mexico's largest private human rights organizations. "The citizens are defenseless."
The Human Right Watch critique arrives amid an offensive by President Felipe Calderón's administration against the country's powerful drug cartels. Calderón and other officials have ignored calls from José Luis Soberanes, president of the human rights commission, to pull troops from the front lines of the drug wars and return them to their barracks.
The United Nations' top human rights official, Louise Albour, made a similar recommendation during a visit to Mexico last week.
Former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari created the human rights commission 18 years ago amid political turmoil caused by his fraud-marred election and public outrage over the murder of a human rights activist.
dudley.althaus(at)chron.com |
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