On 4 September, Amnesty International published a new report, “Out of Control: Torture and Other Abuses in Mexico.” The organization affirms that “torture and other abuses are out of control in Mexico. In 2013, the number of denunciations (1505) increased 600 per cent with respect to 2003, according to the National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH). However, the real statistics may be well higher.”
Speakers at the public presentation of the report indicated that torture lives on due to the unwillingness of national authorities to admit that it exists, not only because it a structural part of the justice system, but also because to eradicate it would require the unmasking of high-ranking officials implicated in the practice.
Furthermore, with regard to the mechanisms designed to avoid this type of situation, Rupert Knox, an AI special investigator, noted that the CNDH “does not act in favor of victims,” and especially in terms of torture, it is “part of the problem and not the solution.”
The document covers a ten-year period during which the CNDH registered 7,164 complaints, with 275 in 2003 and 1,505 last year. All these denunciations led to nothing more than 4 recommendations from the CNDH. “If it is not recognized that there is a truly persistent and generalized problem here; if one speaks, as the subsecretary of Governance did, of only four cases from the CNDH and claims that they [the CNDH] has no greater mandate, it is easy for the government, and all is lost, because the CNDH does not mandate the needed mechanisms to receive complaints, quantify them, and later investigate them as they should be investigated,” Knox said in an interview with media.
For more information (in Spanish):
La tortura en México: 14 datos (Amnistía Internacional, 4 de septiembre de 2014)
“Fuera de control: Tortura y otros malos tratos en México” (Amnistía Internacional, 4 de septiembre de 2014)
Peña debe comprometerse a abordar la cuestión de la tortura (Salil Shetty, Secretario General de Amnistía Internacional, CNN México, 5 de octubre de 2014)
CNDH, “parte del problema en casos de tortura”: Amnistía Internacional(Proceso, 4 de septiembre de 2014)
Tortura, parte estructural del sistema judicial del país: ONG (LA Jornada, 7 de septiembre de 2014)
For more information from SIPAZ (in English):
Chiapas: Presentation of the Special Report: “Torture, mechanism of terror” (3 July 2014)
National: UN Special Rapporteur on torture ends official visit to Mexico (16 May 2014)
Chiapas: release of indigenous prisoners and denunciation of torture in the state (29 April 2014)
Chiapas: Torture and killing of youth the responsibility of municipal police from Acala, CDHFBC denounces (18 March 2014)
Chiapas: Torture and kidnapping of youth Hiber Audentino García Villafuerte (1 January, 2014)
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