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NY Times article on impunity for human rights abuses in Mexico

see also Human Rights Watch’s report.

Original article.
Mexico Human Rights Agency Called Ineffective

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: February 14, 2008, New York Times

MEXICO CITY — There is a common saying in Mexico about police investigations and government inquiries that goes “no pasa nada,” or “nothing happens.”

Indeed, so seldom are officials, soldiers and business leaders held responsible for their actions in court that one often also hears Mexicans decrying their “culture of impunity.” Investigations often start with great fanfare only to die a quiet death.

The National Human Rights Commission was supposed to change that when it was founded in 1990 and given a large budget and staff. The commission is the largest entity of its kind in Latin America, a hulking $73 million a year operation with 1,000 staff members empowered to investigate abuses and make recommendations to prosecutors.

But a new report by Human Rights Watch says the commission has fallen short in its mission. The report found the military officers, government officials and law enforcement agencies regularly ignore the commission’s findings or begin investigations that go nowhere.

For its part, the commission washes its hands of a case as soon as it makes a recommendation, seldom following up to find out whether anyone was ever prosecuted or punished with sanctions, the report said. Neither does the commission put pressure on the government institutions to take action through publicity or appeals to international courts.“We lament that it does not have a bigger impact,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch at a news conference Wednesday. He added: “They don’t follow up.”

José Luis Soberanes, the president of the commission, did not immediately respond to the report. His spokesman, Lazaro Serrania, said a written response would be issued.

The lack of response to the commission has been stunning at times. For instance, the commission did an exhaustive investigation into a state crackdown on anti-globalization protesters in Guadalajara in May 2004.

The commission’s investigators determined the Jalisco State police had arbitrarily detained 70 people and illegally held them incommunicado. They also found that at least 55 of the detainees were subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment, including 19 who were tortured into signing self-incriminating statements.

The governor of Jalisco at the time, Francisco Ramírez Acuña, simply rejected the report, saying he had “no obligation whatsoever to respond.” The commission said it regretted the governor’s position but took no other action. Two years later, President Felipe Calderón named Mr. Ramírez Acuña the Interior Minister. (He resigned in January after failing to push major changes through Congress.)

Other cases have attracted less attention. In 2004, for instance, the commission determined that state police in Chihuahua had used electric shocks to force one Daniel Torres to confess to murder, the report said. State prosecutors never took action against the police and the commission later dropped the case. The commission’s investigators made similar charges against the municipal police in Chihuahua and Tijuana that year but they never resulted in an investigation either.

Between 2000 and 2006, government authorities rejected one in five the 354 recommendations by the commission to prosecute someone for human abuses. Of the rest, the prosecutions failed to result in a conviction more often than not.

In one high profile case, for instance, two peasant leaders in Guerrero, Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera, charged that soldiers had detained and tortured them for two days in 1999, and the commission later recommended the miliary prosecutors press charges, the report said. The army refused to prosecute, saying there was no evidence of torture.

Perhaps the biggest failure involved the disappearance of about 500 dissidents, leftists and suspected guerrillas during the 1960s and 1970s. The commission issued a report 2001 saying it had found evidence at least 275 people had vanished after being arrested and tortured by the police and the military.

A special prosecutors office was created to investigate the charges. In five years, however, the prosecutor managed to get indictments in only nine cases and never obtained a single conviction, mostly because of stonewalling among military officers, the report said. The commission remained largely silent. The prosecutor´s office was closed last year.

Another problem cited in the report is that most of the cases never become public. Nine-tenths of the complaints brought to the commission are settled through a confidential “conciliation agreement” between investigators and the government entity involved. The victims are never consulted about the agreement and the cases are sealed, so it is impossible to judge if justice was served, Mr. Vivanco said.

“We don’t have access to this information,” he said. “And I’m not talking about the tip of the iceberg. It’s almost the whole iceberg.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

* Federal Judge Overturns Ruling Against Mexico’s Former President in 1968 Student Killings (July 13, 2007)
* Mexico’s Federal Forces Pull Out of Oaxaca (December 17, 2006)
* Mexican Report Cites Leaders for ‘Dirty War’ (November 23, 2006)
* Vatican Decries Fence Planned For U.S. Border (November 15, 2006)