Mexico: Aggression against undocumented migrants worsens
[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for November 10. See original article here and related article here.]
by Fabiola Martínez
Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, November 9 – “What country was Calderón talking about?” asked Edith Zavala, executive secretary of the Foro Nacional para las Migraciones [National Forum for Migration] of Honduras, a support network for citizens of that country who have suffered abuse while traveling through Mexico, as soon as the president’s long speech ended..
Calderón listed measures to support the migrants, actions to arrest those responsible for the massacre in Tamaulipas of 72 workers from Central and South America and reassured listeners that his administration respects human rights.
The young Honduran woman showed her astonishment at once: “Those of us who know the daily reality of migrants who travel through Mexico know that things are not as (Calderón) describes them in his speech, which turned out to be very pretty but far from reality. In our oganizations we take care of our countrymen who have been cut up by Los Zetas; we still take in women who have been raped that the migration authorities simply throw onto a return bus at dawn!
“The attacks have gone from extortion or beatings to kidnappings, murder and violent rape. The question is, how high will the level of violence and impunity climb?”
Calderón said all migration policy should be linked to human rights, guarantees that, he said, are above any sovereignty. And, in the case of the assassinated migrants, he asserted that firm and determined action has been taken. He also declared that Mexico has a commitment to legality.
That’s what surprises Edith Zavala, who comes from the Cental American country that, according to official statistics, has the greatest number of its citizens deported.
Soon the priest, Luis Ángel Nieto, who for the past ten years has come to the aid of migrants, almost all of them Central Americans who have been brutally assaulted, said concerning government measures meant to suppress aggression against the undocumented, “Somebody is lying here: either reality or the president.”
He stated during a press conference that as recently as last November 1 in Oaxaca 20 Central Americans were abducted and that the cases are becoming ever more serious (in respect to the forms of violence). “We believe there are cases that reach the level of enslavement and organ trafficking.”
In addition to defenders of human rights, specialists and even representatives of international organizations participating in the Civil Society Days [Jornadas de la Sociedad Civil], during the fourth World Forum on Migration and Development [Foro Mundial sobre Migración y Desarrollo], regretted that the government’s answer when faced with serious cases like the massacre of the 72 Latin Americans never goes beyond the level of condemnation and never specifies what will be done to avoid the repetition of these episodes.
Jorge Bustamante, United Nations rapporteur for migration, asserted that it is necessary to go beyond good intentions, because to date “we do not know what the government will do in the face of something so dramatic, which will go down in history.”
He added that Mexico has to face its responsibility as a state confronted with this and other macabre discoveries. Therefore, he commented, this forum “is an official demand” to the Mexican government “to tell us what it is going to do.”
Emilio Álvarez Icaza, honorary president of these Civil Society Days, warned that the massacre in question should be seen as a limit to the impunity and corruption in cases of assaults against migrants.
Meanwhile, the priest Luis Ángel Nieto, of the Nuestros Lazos de Sangre shelter, and Heiman Vásquez, also a minister, in charge of Hogar Misericordia – both located in Chiapas – related that even though the number of assults in that area has decreased (they ackowledged advances in the work of the state prosecutor in attending to crimes against migrants), it is common that beyond the area of Chiapas the incidence of abuses against the undocumented increases again. For example, eight of every ten women they take into the shelters have been abused sexually, while others are subjected to extortion by migration agents or the police, a sector they judge to be responsible for ten percent of the assaults.
Both of them declared they are in favor of the experience of the Chiapas prosecutor being repeated throughout the country, as an alternative for jailing the aggressors (although it should be pointed out that in two years of its existence most of those detained by this prosecutor’s office are on trial, that is, few have been sentenced for these serious crimes).
Meanwhile, Minister of the Interior Francisco Blake Mora is confident that there will be a law on migration soon in Mexico.
Tags: assaults, Central America, Civil Society Days, Felipe Calderon, Mexico, migrants, Tamaulipas, World Forum on Migration and Development