@CENTRO DE PRODUCCION CEPROPIE
On December 10th, on the occasion of International Human Rights Day, a series of activities were carried out at the national level.
This day, the presentation of the Report “Second Year, a New Human Rights Policy and Presentation of the National Human Rights Program” was presented by the Ministry of the Interior.
Among the main advances in Human Rights of the current administration, the Ayotzinapa Case was pointed out, in particular the creation of the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice, as well as the 101 arrest warrants, of which 63 were released.
Regarding the situation of human rights defenders and journalists, they report that in the period, 1,313 people have been incorporated into the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, of them 426 journalists and 887 defenders. They also point out that the Mechanism is currently undergoing “profound transformations” in compliance with the recommendations of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and seeking to move from a reactive scheme to a preventive scheme, which allows “to guarantee the full exercise of freedom of expression and the defense of human rights to people who are not incorporated into the mechanism.”
Among the cases dealt with by the government, the Acteal case, with its Friendly Settlement Agreement, which “seeks to restore trust after the abandonment by the State for 23 years”, the Chenalho-Aldama conflict, Chiapas, with the signing of the Definitive Agreement, as well as the case of the Pasta de Conchos Mine.
Alejandro Encinas, Undersecretary of the Secretariat for Human Rights, Population and Migration highlighted as one of the most relevant advances the fact that the Mexican government opened the space to the Committee against Enforced Disappearances of the United Nations Organization to hear individual petitions, “A demand of the families that for years was denied.”
The undersecretary also announced the forthcoming publication of the National Human Rights Program, an instrument that seeks to “rethink the performance of the entire public administration in the field of Human Rights, assuming it as a cross-cutting axis of all public policy.”
“There is a long way to go to get out of the serious Human Rights crisis that we face in the country, the one we inherited and the one we have to see to”, Encinas concluded.
The Delegation of the European Union in Mexico for its part organized the webinar “Protecting Human Rights Defenders: the Commitment of the European Union” with the aim of highlighting the situation of human rights defenders in Mexico through direct testimonies.
Juan Carlos Flores Solis, lawyer from the Peoples’ Front in Defense of Land, Water and Air, Morelos, Tlaxcala and Puebla concluded his speech by noting that “a task, which belongs to the European Union, is to regulate companies and investments that come to Mexico, because there are public funds from Spain, companies from Spain, Italy, France, the main interested in the MIP.”
Lawyer David Peña Rodriguez, Legal Coordinator of the Action Group for Human Rights and Social Justice A.C., stressed that “there is a clear setback in the progress that had been made in the area of human rights” regarding the current administration.
The journalist Soledad Jarquin Edgar, defender of the case of her daughter Maria del Sol Cruz Jarquin, murdered in Juchitan de Zaragoza in June 2018, denounced that “30 months after the murder we have not had any progress, the greatest obstacle we have is impunity.”
The journalist Patricia Mayorga Ordóñez, from the Free Network of Journalists, said that “an obstacle is the traditional media that have privileged official publicity and have become a weapon against journalism, prioritizing the economic and political interests of news companies.”
To conclude, Felicitas Martinez Martinez, indigenous leader, First Coordinator in the history of CRAC, declared that “it is important that the Delegation of the European Union support and follow up. Not just moral support.”
It is important to note that on the same day the Secretariat of the Navy (SEMAR) and the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) signed a collaboration agreement to develop joint actions, training, prevention, and promotion of human rights.
For more information in Spanish:
En Derechos Humanos hay una regresión, la impunidad es el signo y se mantienen los pactos políticos del pasado en el presente (Servicio Especial de la Mujer, 9 de diciembre de 2020)
Semar y CNDH convenio de colaboración en derechos humanos (El Universal, 10 de diciembre de 2020)
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