AS/COA Online | LatAm in Focus: Shining a Light on Police Abuse in Mexico

Photo by C. Zissis

AS/COA Online · Shining a Light on Police Abuse In Mexico

Earlier this month, as demonstrators across the United States took to the streets in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and to oppose police violence, Mexico was witnessing protests of its own.

On May 4, police detained a construction worker named Giovanni López just outside of Guadalajara because he wasn’t wearing facemask amid the coronavirus pandemic. He later turned up dead, his body showing signs of torture. While the types of bodycams that have frequently exposed police violence in the United States are not widely used in Mexico, López’s family had recorded a video of the police taking him and they released it to the public in hopes of speeding justice. The video went viral in early June, and protests erupted, primarily in Guadalajara and Mexico City. Three municipal police officers were arrested for the extrajudicial killing.

The case of Giovanni López drew attention to a problem in Mexico’s criminal justice system: police abuse is highly prevalent and rarely reported, let alone investigated. A 2019 World Justice Project (WJP) Report based on a survey of nearly 52,000 people found that only about 10 percent of cases of police torture get reported in Mexico, while nearly 8 in 10 prison inmates experience some form of violence or ill treatment at the hands of police. Torture—which can range from a bag over the head, to threats against family members, to electroshocks, to sexual violence—is frequently used to extract confessions.

“Mexico is using torture and ill treatment as investigative tools.”

“Mexico is using torture and ill treatment as investigative tools,” the report’s co-author and WJP Senior Researcher Roberto Hernández told AS/COA Online’s Carin Zissis. Hernández also co-directed the Emmy Award-winning film Presunto culpable (Presumed Guilty). On top of being Mexico’s most-watched documentary to date, the film exposed why the country’s criminal justice system so frequently leads to the conviction of innocent people and, after its theatrical release nearly a decade ago, helped usher in a judicial reform.

Hernández, who is also a lawyer, says there has been some progress in conjunction with the reform. For example, the system has shifted from a point in which only 7 percent of inmates say a judge was present in the courtroom to hear a case to one being present in most cases. In addition, he cites the example of a municipality called Escobedo in the northern state of Nuevo León that implemented successful policing practices, right down to using bodycams when making traffic stops, that reduced abuses. “I think it’s going to be these small examples of, if you will, islands of integrity that could set forth positive change and prove that it is possible to make these things happen in Mexico,” says Hernández.But, in the meantime, there is a lot of room for progress, from strengthening the public defense system to implementing a recommendation from Mexico’s human rights commission for police forces to use bodycams across the country. “The main problems, the persistent problems of Mexico’s criminal justice system are still there—the use of torture and ill treatment, the overuse of eyewitness testimony…the overuse of confessions,” says Hernández. “Mexico still has a long way to go.”

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Luisa Leme produced this episode.

AS/COA Online | Obama Condemns Cuba's "Clenched Fist"

The White House took a break from rallies for health care reform this week to issue a condemnation of human rights conditions in Cuba. U.S. President Barack Obama called the death of a hunger striker and repression of human rights activists as “deeply disturbing” in a March 24 statement. “These events underscore that instead of embracing an opportunity to enter a new era, Cuban authorities continue to respond to the aspirations of the Cuban people with a clenched fist,” he added. The president’s words—perhaps his harshest criticism of the Cuban government since taking office—come during a time of protests in Havana and Miami over recent attempts to silence a dissident group known as Las Damas de Blanco, or the Ladies in White. 

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CFR.org | America's Human Rights List

The annual release of a report on human rights by the U.S. State Department is mandated by law, and the Bush administration is hardly the first to face uncomfortable questions about its qualifications to judge such issues. As usual, this year's report reviews progress and pitfalls around the world—not including the United States—and highlights major offenders. But senior officials acknowledged the report also comes at a time when Washington's own adherence to human rights principles is under fire.

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CFR.org | Crisis Guide | Darfur

CFR.org's Emmy Award-winning multimedia exploration of the crisis in Darfur and its policy implications.

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CFR.org | Pakistan’s Uneven Push for Women

The women’s rights movement in Pakistan suffered a blow (Australian) when a religious extremist recently shot and killed cabinet minister Zilla Huma Usman as she prepared to address a public meeting without a veil covering her face. A prominent rights activist, Usman had previously drawn the ire of conservative Muslims when she helped organize a mixed-gender marathon. Her assassination came within days of Pakistan’s Women’s Rights Day, as well as the proposal of the new Prevention of Anti-Women Practices Bill, which outlaws forced marriages (Daily Times) and strengthens women's right to inheritance. 

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CFR.org | China’s Olympian Challenges

When China won the bid to host the 2008 summer Olympics, it pledged to address environmental concerns, human rights grievances, and restrictive press laws. International Olympics Committee inspectors gave Beijing high marks when they held their first review (Reuters) of the city’s preparations in mid-January. 

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CFR.org | Violence After Darfur Deal

Arab militias known as Janjaweed have terrorized Darfur's African civilians with the backing of Sudan's government since 2003, despite international clamor against what the U.S. government and human rights groups call genocide. Peace negotiations between the Sudanese government and rebels teetered on the brink of collapse for nearly a week until Friday morning, when the Sudanese government and Sudanese Liberation Movement—the largest rebel faction—agreed to a deal called "a shaky foundation" by the Financial Times. The pact, which rebel leaders agreed to "with reservations," was brokered by U.S., British, and African Union (AU) mediators, including U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who rushed to the talks in Abuja, Nigeria after the sides failed to meet an April 30 deadline (AllAfrica.com). The history and main players of the Darfur crisis are explained in this CFR Background Q&A.

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Amnesty International Magazine | Homegrown Progress

Turkish human rights defender Cânân Arin takes a bricks-and-mortar approach to building a movement for women's rights.

Cânân Arin casually shrugs when describing the occupational hazards of being a leading women's rights advocate in Turkey. A few years ago, Arin recalls, a doctor in Istanbul survived a beating from her husband that left her spine broken in three places. When Arin helped the doctor initiate divorce proceedings, the abuser came after her as well.

"He threatened me, he tried to bribe me, he tried everything against me because there was no way to break me," says Arin, a lawyer who has pioneered the movement to provide shelter and legal services for domestic violence victims in Turkey. An unfaltering, powerful woman of 63, Arin knew she was the last line of defense for the woman; her family had turned her away and her abuser had evaded jail by paying a $2 fine.

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FOXNews.com | Children in Camo: Underage Warriors Become Growing Concern

In the early 1980s, Oscar Torres (search) and the other boys in his neighborhood would clamber up to the corrugated tin roofs of their one-room shacks to hide from military officers, who forcibly recruited children as young as 12 years old to fight in El Salvador's civil war. Boys who did not become soldiers often fought for guerrilla forces.

"That was our daily life," recalls Torres, 34, who fled to the United States in 1984. "We didn't think it was anything extraordinary."

Two decades later, screenwriter Torres was initially reluctant when Mexican filmmaker Luis Mandoki encouraged him to co-write a script based on his war-torn childhood for the film "Innocent Voices," which is being released Friday in major U.S. cities.

"He asked me, 'Why me?'" said Mandoki. "But by the end he realized, 'It's not just about me.'"

Before the film's closing credits roll, statistics flash across the screen about child soldiers forced to fight for national militaries and rebel groups. Although more than 190 countries agree that a person legally becomes an adult at the age of 18, the United Nations estimates that 300,000 children under that age are engaged in as many as 30 conflicts around the globe, from Uganda to Colombia, from Sri Lanka to Sierra Leone.

"It's become like a global virus," said P.W. Singer, author of the book "Children of War" and national security fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

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Amnesty International Magazine | Traffic Report

Human trafficking is neck-and-neck with arms dealing as the second largest criminal industry in the world, after the drug trade, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

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Amnesty International Magazine - Spare the Child

Over the past 15 years the world has made major strides toward ending the execution of juvenile offenders.

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Amnesty International Magazine - Afghanistan Unveiled

When the Taliban was in power, most of the women who filmed Afghanistan Unveiled could barely leave their homes, let alone study or work. But in 2002, the young documentarians - some still teenagers - traveled across mountains, rivers, and deserts to make the first film by and about Afghan women.

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