CODEMIRE Group (@izq.mx)
In an 8 April press-conference, there was announced the founding of the Collective of Defenders of Migrants and Refugees (CODEMIRE), comprised of 28 migrant homes located in southern, centrla, and northern Mexico. Members of the new grouping expressed their rejection of the Southern Border Plan, launched by President Enrique Peña Nieto in July 2014, considering it to have contributed to greater human-rights violations against the migrants who cross through Mexico toward the United States. They added that in comparison with 2013, there was a 47% increase int he number of arrests in 2014–not just on the border, but also aboard buses, on highways, and on freight-trains, among other locations. They stressed that migrants’ vulnerability has not declined, for they face multiple challenges: extortion by the police, agents from the National Migration Institute (INM), the Navy, and the Army; kidnapping, disappearance, rape, and assault from organized-rime groups “that have found more fertile land after this plan was implemented.”
The members of the new collective have announced that they will unify their efforts toward the end of attending to and defending migrants transiting through the country, and protecting the rights-defenders of this populace who are threatened with death, criminalized, and persecuted for carrying out their work.
They called on the Mexican State to observe its obligation of providing security and protection to migrants; to cease the operations of migratory verification which imperil life, physical integrity, and human rights; to suspend the Southern Border Plan; and never to allow a plan of this magnitude to be implemented again without social scrutiny.
For more information (in Spanish):
Crean red de albergues y casas para desplazados (La Jornada, 9 de abril de 2015)
Defensores de migrantes en México rechazan Plan Frontera Sur (Chiapas Paralelo, 9 de abril de 2015)
Organizaciones exigen la cancelación del programa Frontera Sur, por “poner en riesgo” a migrantes (Emeequis, 8 de abril de 2015)
Fore more information from SIPAZ (in English):
Mexico/National: Honduran migrant dies of drowning in presence of INM agents, says La 72 (22 March 2015)
Mexico/Tabasco: INM agent’s legal demand against Fray Tomás González(13 November 2014)
Mexico/Chiapas: Caravan of Central American Mothers, “Bridges of Hope,” in San Cristóbal (16 December 2014)
National/Chiapas: Massive raids against migrants and attack on human-rights defenders (3 May 2014)
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