Migratory Station XXI Century (@presidencia.gob.mx)
On 29 October, close to 300 Honduran migrants engaged in a mutiny at the Century XXI Migrant Station (EMSXXI) located in Tapachula. Fifteen migrants succeeded in escaping, but 10 were captured in an operation carried out by different security forces, while five escaped the police siege.
Jazmin Yaneth Cabrera Lopez, regional director of the National Migration Institute (INM) at the XXI Migrant Station, reported that the mutiny had to do with the fact that the migrants had been held for more than 10 days, given that the Honduran consulate was on vacations, thus making impossible progress in terms of documents needed for their return.
In a communique released on 30 October, the Fray Matía de Córdoba Center for Human Rights indicated that “the event that took place last Wednesday within the detention center for migrants in Tapachula […] shows the consequences generated by the repressive policy of control, detention, and deportation that the Mexican State has implemented in recent months. It confirms that the kidnapping of migrants, instead of protecting them and guaranteeing their basic rights, affects their physical and emotional integrity and the basic rights of men, women, children, and adolescents.” The Center also noted that “the strengthening at the border, that is to say the armor and application of strategies for security and militarization under the Southern Border Plan, as implemented by the federal government, is causing backup at the EMSXXI, the principal center for deportation in Latin America. This comes in addition to the poor living and hygienic conditions inside and the lack of protective consular assistance, which are the principal demands of those who rose up, who clearly are deprived of their liberty, without having committed any crime. They were also confined to cells and had their food rationed. This is a clear manifestation of what happens when the social reality of migrants is addressed only with the focus of criminalization and control, without consideration that the causes of migration are multiple and complex. Many are fleeing the social and political violence that exists in their countries. They require true protection.”
For more information (in Spanish):
MOTÍN EN EL CENTRO DE DETENCIÓN “ESTACIÓN MIGRATORIA SIGLO XXI”, REFLEJO DE UNA POLÍTICA DE CONTROL QUE NO GARANTIZA DERECHOS HUMANOS FUNDAMENTALES (Boletín del CFH Fray Matía de Cordobá, 30 de octubre de 2014)
Huyen 15 hondureños de estación migratoria en Chiapas (El Universal, 29 de octubre de 2014)
Motín en estación migratoria de Tapachula; hay 5 prófugos (OEM, 29 de octubre de 2014)
For more information from SIPAZ (in English):
National: creation of mechanism for human-rights observation amidst the militarization of the Southern Border (2 September 2014)
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