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RIGHTS-MEXICO: Activists Worried About What Calderon Will Do

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Feb 13 2007 (IPS) - The lack of any statements in support of human rights, a key minister accused of abuses when he was a governor, and the more active role taken by the armed forces in Mexico have civil society dismayed about the government of Felipe Calderón.

“The administration’s been in power for two months and nothing has been said about human rights, nor has any door been opened for dialogue with society, nor have there been any other encouraging signals. We’re very concerned,” Edgar Cortez, executive secretary of the “All Rights For All” National Civil Human Rights Organisations Network, made up of 54 local groups, told IPS.

Mexican League for the Defence of Human Rights president Adrián Ramírez holds a similar view. “Although the administration is just getting under way, the sum total of its actions and omissions to date would indicate that we are in for a worrying time,” he told IPS.

For the first time in the Calderón administration, an official has announced that a position statement about human rights will be issued shortly. The announcement, made at a meeting between the authorities and delegates of Amnesty International, did not entirely allay activists’ suspicions.

“The government has already laid its foundations, and it doesn’t bode well for the future, so we won’t be taking their promises at face value,” Ramírez said.

When Calderón was invested as president on Dec. 1, non-governmental organisations applauded the government for authorising the International Civil Commission for Human Rights Observation, with members representing 30 countries, most of them European, to work in Mexico. But even on this point there is now disillusionment.

The Commission was in Mexico from Dec. 18 to mid-January with the purpose of taking down testimonies and issuing a final report on events in the southern state of Oaxaca, where a six-month-long popular uprising last year was violently put down by police and irregular armed groups, with the loss of about 20 people’s lives and 370 people injured.

Commission spokespersons provided the press with part of the report ahead of time, confirming that the security forces committed grave human rights violations in Oaxaca.

After word of these preliminary conclusions got out, when by agreement between the government and the Commission they should have been kept confidential until the report was finished and had been handed over to the authorities, an official spokesperson denied them.

According to the head of the Interior Ministry’s Human Rights Promotion and Defence Unit, Eugenia Diez, the Commission had acted unprofessionally and was biased in the testimony it heard.

Cortez said that such a dismissal of the Commission’s findings reflected what the present authorities thought about human rights.

Rupert Knox, Amnesty International’s researcher on Mexico, called on the Calderón administration to end its silence and state a firm, clear position on human rights.

Calderón has made no mention of the issue in any of his speeches.

In contrast, Vicente Fox (2000-2006), Calderón’s predecessor and fellow National Action Party (PAN) member, spoke out loudly and clearly about human rights when he took office. Although six years later activists were disappointed in Fox, they recognise that he was open and interested in the issue.

“Now (with the Calderón administration) we have no one to talk to, and they don’t even answer when we write to them,” said the “All Rights For All” Network’s Cortez.

One of the things that bothers activists most is that Calderón has appointed Francisco Ramírez, the former governor of the state of Jalisco, as interior minister.

In May 2004, when he was governor, Ramírez ordered a heavy clampdown on hundreds of young people who had gathered in the western city of Guadalajara to demonstrate at the Latin America and the Caribbean/European Union Summit.

The police illegally detained 73 demonstrators, tortured at least 19 and subjected another 55 to humiliating and degrading treatment, according to a detailed report by the governmental National Human Rights Commission.

Governor Ramírez waved away the accusations at the time. He said that only reasonable force had been used, and even decorated police officers accused of illegal acts. After his ministerial appointment, he reiterated these arguments.

The Mexican League for the Defence of Human Rights and the “All Rights for All” National Civil Human Rights Organisations Network consider that Ramírez is sure-fire proof that in the current government, human rights will not count for much.

In the opinion of these human rights groups, Ramírez is one of the officials who are most enthusiastic about the fact that Calderón has made security his number one priority.

The government deployed military and police forces in several Mexican states in an unprecedented operation against drug traffickers, who are caught up in an inferno of violence because of internal disputes and turf wars.

But in the view of human rights activists, little has been achieved by the operations, and the mass presence of security forces constitutes a threat to people and their rights.

They accuse the government of being chiefly interested in criminalising social protest with the pretext of fighting crime.