PBI-Canada remembers Digna Ochoa, the human rights lawyer murdered 23 years ago in Mexico
In its 2001 annual review, Peace Brigades International noted: “The situation of human rights defenders [in Mexico] worsened significantly after the 19 October assassination of internationally known human rights defender Digna Ochoa and death threats against other human rights defenders.”
That PBI report further noted: “One of the cases that Digna Ochoa had been working on implicated the army in human rights abuses against environmental activists campaigning against logging in Guerrero.”
Ochoa is also mentioned in the PBI publication Dignas – Voices of Women.
In it, Emiliana Cerezo Contreras says: “In 2001 my brothers were accused of putting bombs in several offices of the National Bank of Mexico, Banamex. Through some friends, my brother Alejandro got in contact with Pilar Noriega and Digna Ochoa, two lawyers who took on their cases. That is how the Cerezo Committee was created.”
Lawyer’s Rights Watch Canada adds: “She represented many cases involving allegations of torture or murder by Mexico’s military and security forces, including the widows of the Aguas Blancas massacre and the campesino ecologists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera. Montiel and Cabrera, who received the Goldman award for their work in forcing Boise Cascade to stop clear-cutting in the southern state of Guerrero, were sentenced to imprisonment on drug and weapons charges that Ochoa claimed were fabricated. Digna exposed the use of torture by the army to extract confessions from the environmentalists.”
IACHR ruling
In January 2022, La Jornada reported: “The Inter-American Court of Human Rights [IACHR] has found Mexico responsible for serious failures in the investigation into the death of human rights defender Digna Ochoa on 19 October 2001.”
That article adds: “Therefore, it ordered the Mexican state to reopen the investigations of the case in pertinent terms; investigate and eventually prosecute those possibly responsible for her death; carry out a public act of international responsibility and create a recognition in the defense of human rights that will bear the name ‘Digna Ochoa y Plácido’.”
Further reading: Inter-American Court of Human Rights : Mexico condemned for the murder of Digna OCHOA, lawyer and human rights defender (International Observatory of Lawyers).
Once Noticias then reported: “In compliance with the ruling, on October 19, 2022, an act of Recognition of Responsibility of the Mexican State was held and a public apology was offered to Defender Digna Ochoa y Plácido, as well as to her relatives.”
And in May 2023, MVS Noticias reported: “21 years and 7 months after the murder of activist and human rights defender Digna Ochoa y Placido, the Mexican State inaugurated the street with her name in the country’s capital.”
That article further highlights: “Jesus Ochoa, recalled that more than two decades after the murder of his sister, no people have been arrested and the case remains unpunished, so he trusts that the investigation will be reopened to clarify this case.”
23rd anniversary
Journalist Argenis Esquipulas now writes in Portavoz Chiapas: “23 years after the murder of Digna Ochoa y Plácido, her memory resonates strongly in the struggle for human rights in Mexico. …The life and death of Digna Ochoa y Plácido remain a reminder that the struggle for human rights in Mexico is not only necessary, but often dangerous. Her legacy lives on in every action that is taken in favor of justice, and her voice continues to resonate in the streets where truth and justice are demanded.”
Toronto Star reporter Linda Diebel knew Digna and wrote the book “Betrayed: The Assassination of Digna Ochoa” that was published in 2005.
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