PBI-Mexico speaks at media conference on human rights violations over the past year

Photo: The coordinator of the Mexico office of Peace Brigades International, Sandra G. de Garmendia; Mexican journalist Jade Ramírez Cuevas; the coordinator of the Cerezo Mexico Committee, Francisco Cerezo; and the deputy representative in Mexico of the Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations for human rights, Jesús Peña at a press conference in Mexico City. Photo by EFE/Jose Mendez.

On August 24, EFE reports: “In the last year there were a total of 118 events that violated the human rights of defenders, according to the report ‘Defending human rights in Mexico: between omission and simulation’, presented on Tuesday [August 23] by several non-governmental organizations in the Mexican capital.”

The article adds: “For her part, Sandra G. de Garmendia, coordinator of the Mexico office of the organization Peace Brigades International, considered that although, sustained over time, ‘there may have been a decline,’ this does not imply the elimination of human rights violations. ‘In addition to non-commission, omission is not enough. We need proactivity from the authorities,’ she shared.”

The article also notes:

“The report, presented by the organizations Comité Cerezo and Acción Urgente para Defensores de Derechos Humanos (ACUDDEH), covers from June 2021 to May 2022, details that 39 organizations, 28 communities, 48 people and three family members were affected in these events.

In addition, it was pointed out that ‘it is evident that the main perpetrators of these acts are the police of the federal entities that maintain a preference for the same classes and types of aggressions, harassment and threats that characterized the repressive strategy of the previous six-year terms.’ On the other hand, in the same period there were 307 acts of arbitrary detention, whose main objective was to dismantle the exercise and defense of the human right to protest.

Also 28 people were victims of extrajudicial execution and 19 of enforced disappearance.

‘The use of extrajudicial execution and forced disappearance is used as a repressive strategy of disarticulation and annihilation against defenders of the human right to protest, to a dignified life and to territory,’ they added.

They also explained in the report that the perpetrators of these two human rights violations are police from federal and municipal entities and paramilitary groups linked to the governments of the states, the Mexican Army and the National Guard.

For the rapporteurs of the presentation of the report, enough time has passed since López Obrador’s inauguration on December 1, 2018, to conclude that they are not fulfilling the promise of protection for human rights defenders.

Nor to journalists, since so far this year fifteen reporters were killed and the president continues to disqualify them in his daily press conferences.”

The full EFE article can be read at En 2021 en México hubo 118 violaciones de derechos de defensores.

For the full report on the ACUDDEH website, please see: Informe. Defender los derechos humanos en México: entre la omisión y la simulación – Junio de 2021 a mayo de 2022.

Photo by ACCUDEH.

Photo by ACCUDEH.