SIPAZ

Mexico: Controversial, Calderón’s initiative to reform the military tribunal

On 18 October, President Felipe Calderón sent to the Senate of the Republic an initiative to reform the Military Penal Code that would modify Mexico’s military tribunals in such a way as to have soldiers who commit crimes of torture, forced disappearance, and sexual violence be tried in civilian courts.  Human-rights organizations criticized the initiative as being insufficient, given that it does not do away with the prevailing impunity regarding violations committed by the military and ignores other types of human-rights violations.

This initiative of the Federal Executive claims that the prosecution of the crimes of torture, rape, and forced disappearance be taken up by the federal Public Ministry (PM).  Toward this end would be created the Military Ministerial Police, subordinate to the PM.  The public servants who commit the crime of forced disappearance would face a sentence of between 20 and 50 years without possibility of pardon or early release.

International human-rights organizations claimed that the proposed reform is insufficient.  The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico asserts that the initiative opens a path toward observing the sentences handed down by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights (IACHR) in the cases of Rosendo Radilla (forced disappearance) and Valentina Rosendo and Inés Fernández (sexual violence committed by soldiers); regardless, though, the Office considers the reform to be lacking, given that it does not cover all crimes committed by soldiers against civilian populations, a position also shared by Amnesty International.  In the same sense, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Independence of Teachers and Lawyers, Gabriela Knaul, denounced that the reform does not include grave crimes, such as that of extrajudicial execution.

For their part, different Mexican human-rights organizations expressed in a joint bulletin that the proposed reform maintains the conditions that favor impunity with regard to abuses by the armed forces against civilians.  They explain that the proposal does not harmonize internal legislation with international law, stressing that the IACHR sentences would not be observed with this reform, given that the IACHR has “called for reform of article 57 of the Military Penal Code, considering that the military tribunal is not competent to judge under any circumstances any crime committed by soldiers against civilians.” For their part, on 21 October, civil and social organizations from the state of Guerrero released a communiqué on the question, remembering that “the four sentences [of the IACHR] against Mexico (the case of a cotton camp; the case of Rosendo Radilla; the cases of Inés Fernández and Valentina Rosendo) have to do with soldiers who have violated human rights; three of these four processes have taken place in the state of Guerrero.”

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