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Solidarity with
the victims of Atenco - Europe |
Added June 08,
2006
Mexico
Huma Rights Group: There Is No Doubt
That Police Sexual Assaults Against
Women In Atenco Were A Form Of Torture
No hay duda que agresiones a mujeres en
Atenco son tortura.
According
to Felicitas Treue, a psychotherapist
working with the non-profit group
Collective Against Torture And Impunity,
there is no doubt that the sexual
assaults faced by 23 women at the hands
of policemen during a police
operation in early May 2006 were a form
of toture.
As a participant in the
round table session “The women of
Atenco,” organized monthly by the
Friedrich Ebert Foundation and
Communic-ation & Information for Woman
AC (CIMAC), the activist stated that
these acts of sexual aggression were
committed to show that women are
objects.
Treue explained that the
assaults against women are a
demonstration of acts of control by men,
be they police, military or a custodian.
These acts are a form of “punishment”
for women who “dare” to leave their
traditional role.
Treue noted that women
have always been a booty of war.
In this case, they were a "reward" for
police officers responsible for
enforcing the law.
In turn, Alicia Elena
Pérez Duarte, Special Prosecutor for
Violent Crimes Against Women, of the
Attorney General of the Republic (PGR),
indicated that she has begun an initial
investigation into the case of Atenco.
She committed her office to apply
principles of equality and
non-discrimination in their
investigation.
- CimacNoticias
News for Women
Mexico City
June 7, 2006
Added June 05,
2006
Mexico
Mexico Solidarity Network's Weekly
News Summary On Atenco
The International Commission for
Observation of Human Rights, made up
mainly of European human rights
activists, spent the week interviewing
Atenco residents, government officials
and human rights organizations, and
trying - unsuccess-fully - to visit 27
political prisoners from Atenco held in
two prisons. Prison officials also
denied visitation rights to family
members and conducted several court
hearings in private, both clear
violation of Mexican law.
Police officials and
Mexico state Governor Enrique Pena
continued to deny any grave misconduct
on the part of police, and sited the
results of lie detector tests conducted
in private as "proof."
Most of the 27 prisoners
held in Santiaguito Prison entered the
fourth week of a hunger strike that has
left many in a weakened state.
Demands include release of all Atenco
prisoners, justice for those who
suffered rape, beatings and torture, and
impeachment of Governor Enrique Pena.
The newly formed organization Women
Without Fear - We Are All Atenco
organized a rotating hunger strike and
24-hour vigilance in front of the
prison. Actress Ofelia Medina led
the first group of hunger strikers.
In a biting editorial in
Friday's (06/02) La Jornada, Adolfo
Gilly highlighted the use of sexual
violence to attack social movements as a
new, and particularly worrisome, state
strategy: "With the police rapes of the
women of Atenco, the violence of the
Mexican state surpassed a limit.
Of course, before, the state killed,
committed massacres, tortured,
kidnap-ped, raped and disappeared
people. But since [the 1968
student massacre at] ‘Tlatelolco,’
even with the assassi-nations and
disappearances of the 70s and successive
years, they had not practiced mass rape
of women prisoners as they did recently
in the case of San Salvador Atenco - a
collective act of barbarity that no
uniformed officer would commit without
orders from commanders."
- Mexico
Solidarity
Network
June 4,
2006
Added June 01,
2006
Mexico
Catalonian Legal Scholar: Sexist Bias
Exists in Mexico’s Laws
Sesgo machista en
leyes mexicanas: especialista catalana
Integrante de la misión española de
observación en Atenco
Encarnacion Bodelón González, a
Catalonian specialist in legal
philosophy with a focus on gender law,
has declared that the denial of the
validity of the testimony of 23 women
sexually assaulted by police officers in
the town of Atenco is a form of machismo
(formalized sexism) that affects the
application of laws in Mexico.
During her visit to the
town of Atenco with the Commission this
past Tuesday, Bodelón González verified
the many testimonies of sexual
aggressions, as well as the degree of
psychological trauma faced by the
victims.
According to Bodelón
González , news reports about the
possible exoneration of the police
officers accused in the sexual assaults,
based on the supposed use of lie
detector tests, cannot have any
probative value because of the
unreliability of such tests.
In Bodelón González’s
opinion, what happened in Atenco “is one
more example of how our patriarchal
culture has made women invisible” and
reinforces the idea that women’s
autonomy, dignity and veracity can be
denied before the law.
Bodelón González: These
sexual assaults were carried out by the
same [federal] law enforcement who has
[ordered other acts of repression in
Mexico]. These sexual attacks are
evidence of a strategy of terror not
only toward the community of Atenco, but
toward a particular demographic profile
of free thinking, autonomous women.
This attack was meant to send a message
to the women of Mexico.”
Bodelón González noted
that through her interviews with the
victims (many of whom remain in prison),
they have received no medical treatment
or services for victims of sexual
assault. The few women who have
been release have only received limited
help from non-profit organizations and
the Autonomous University of Mexico
(UNAM).
The consequences of this
extreme violence against the community
of Atenco, the jurist said, could seen
in the fact that the women and children
of the community who were not attacked
are very fearful, and present symptoms
of post-traumatic stress and anxiety.
Bodelón González called
upon national and international feminist
organiz-ations to organize a support
effort to end this violence against
women.
-Lourdes
Godínez Leal
CimacNoticias
News for Women
Mexico City
May 31, 2006
LibertadLatina
Note:
Catalonia is a region, and nationality
within Spain.
Added
May 27, 2006
Mexico
Feminists Demand That National Public
Security Undersecretary Miguel Angel
Yunes Resign In Wake Of Atenco
Exigen feministas la renuncia de Miguel
Angel
Feminist members of Consortium for
Parliamentary Dialogue and the Equality and Integral
Health for the Woman (SIPAM) have demanded the immediate
resignation of National Public Security Undersecretary
Miguel Angel Yunes for his failure to accept
responsibility for the sexual violence committed by
federal and state police officers in Atenco on May 3rd
and 4th, 2006.
In a communiqué, the
organization’s signatories staed that
the petition will be delivered to an
official responsible for the Preventive
Federal Police (PFP), in whose
headquarters they will carry out
tomorrow a long wait in repudiation by
the crime abuses of the past 3 and 4 of
May passed in San Savior Atenco.
Yunes is accused by
feminists of being directly responsible
for the criminal sexual violence
committed by officers of the PFP, which
is under Yunes’ control. They also
accuse Yunes of wrapping the actions of
the PFP in the a cloak of legitimacy,
putting in doubt the truthfulness of the
complaints filed by the [23] victims,
and effectively justifying the sex
crimes committed by the officers.
In the face of the
indignation of women who protest these
brutal acts, the abuse of power and the
criminality perpetrated by police forces
in the Atenco operation, the feminist
organizations demand that Yunes not only
resign, but that he be put at the
disposal of the investigating
authorities.
The feminists also demand
that the police accused of involvement
in the rapes and sexual assaults be made
examples of, and demand an end to state
repression against popular social
movements.
- Lourdes Godínez
Cimac Noticias
News for Women
Mexico City
May 25, 2006
Added
May 24, 2006
Mexico
Amnesty International: Federal Attorney General
Should Take Over Rape Cases From State Of Mexico
AI exige a PGR atraer
los casos de violación.
Amnesty international (AI)
has declared that the rapes and sexual assaults
perpetrated against detained women by police forces in
Atenco constitute acts of torture. Together with
Mexico's Friar Francisco Vitoria Human Rights Center,
AI has requested that the Attorney General of the
Republic (PGR) take over the seven cases of rape
suffered by women arrested during a police operation in
San Savior Atenco this past may 3rd
and 4th, 2006.
Liliana Velázquez, president of AI
in Mexico, said that the investigation into the case
should be done in an exhaustive and impartial manner.
- El Universal
Mexico City
May 24, 2006
Added
May 24, 2006
Mexico
Amnesty: Mexico's Human Rights Efforts Inadequate And
Deceptive
Ven
decepcionante trabajo en derechos humanos.
Amnesty International has indicated that
the actions carried out by the Mexican federal
government in the field of human rights are
"insufficient and disappointing" due to the impunity
that prevails in Mexico, and due to persistent practices
such as arbitrary detention, torture and violence
against the women.
Liliana Velázquez, president of AI in
Mexico, expressed her concern because, on the one hand,
the administration of President Vicente Fox has failed
in its intent to judge and to punish those responsible
for the crimes of the past [the Dirty War] and on the
other hand, the special prosecutor of the Attorney
General of the Republic (PGR) to investigate the murders
of women in City Juárez (in Chihuahua state) has not
held itself accountable [for inaction in those cases].
Liliana Velázquez:
"Impunity is commonplace [in Mexico], and
we ask ourselves… is this the exception or, now, the
rule."
- El Universal
Mexico City
May 24, 2006
Added
May 24, 2006
Mexico
Supreme court Chief Justice: Nations Judges Cannot Be
Indifferent To Human Rights
"Jueces no
deben ser indiferentes."
Speaking before an audience at the
National Autono-mous University of Mexico (UNAM),
Mexico’s President of the Supreme Court of Justice of
the Nation (SCJN), Mariano Adze, stated that the
nation’s judges should not be indifferent to violations
of human rights, because they are responsible for
protecting those guarantees through their acts of
sentencing.
In presenting the opening speech of the
forum, Mariano Adze said that all judges, "from the
level of a municipal magistrate who knows of arbitrary
acts by a cacique [overlord, town boss] in remote
mountain areas… to judges in courts that are forums for
national issues... have an irrevocable responsibility to
protect the fundamental rights of the people."
- El Universal
Mexico City
May 24, 2006
Added
May 24, 2006
Mexico
Human Rights Commission Calls PFP Federal Police Report
“Partial & Fixed”
"La PFP no
se puede deslindar."
(The PFP Police cannot
distance themselves [from the events at Atenco, in which
their officers also face investigation].)
Mexico’s Federal Preventive Police (PFP)
cannot distance itself from the facts in the San Savior
Atenco case. The only institution authorized to
determine if public servants incurred responsibility for
violating funda-mental guarantees is the National
Commission of the Human Rights (CNDH).
CNDH Second Inspector General Susana
Thalía Pedroza added that the report provided by the PFP
in regard to the case is "partial and fixed."
Therefore, the CNDH must assume its responsibility.
During an interview with El Universal,
Pedroza assured that the CNDH possesses photographs,
videos and other evidence of the ‘fingerprints’ that
remain on [the bodies of] these women as consequence of
the abuses and sexual violations that they suffered.
Pedroza said that in none of the six
complaints of rape presented by the victims to the CNDH
involve sexual intercourse, but, she added, the Penal
Code of the State of Mexico also includes in its
definition of rape... vaginal, anal or oral penetration
by any part of the body or by an object, against the
will of the person.
- Liliana Alcántara
El Universal
Mexico City
May 24, 2006
Added
May 23, 2006
Mexico
Human
Rights Commission: Seven Women Were
Raped At Atenco
|
 |
|
CNDH
ombudsman
José Luis
Soberanes |
CNDH: Women who alleged rape are telling
the truth
CNDH: The victims have not under-gone
gynecological exams because of the state
of trauma that they are in.
Upon presenting their
preliminary report in regard to the
violent acts at Texcoco and San Salvador
Atenco on May 3rd
and 4th, 2006, the National
Commission of Human Rights (CNDH)
asserted that "nobody can say that the
19 Mexican women and the four foreigners
lied in their accusations rape and sex
abuse... we have we have accredited
their reports with detailed minutes,
videos, medical opinions and
photographs. As a result, we have
presented our findings to the public
prosecutor’s office for the state of
Mexico.
CNDH national ombudsman
José Luis Soberanes reported that as a
result of the raid by municipal, state,
preventive, and federal police officers,
211 complaints have been received; some
individuals refer at more than one
violation of their human rights.
- La Jornada
Mexico City
May 23, 2006
Added
May 23, 2006
Mexico
Repression, Rape and Torture by
Police In Mexico State
Algunos
testimonios de violaciones a los
derechos humanos de las mujeres
detenidas en San Salvador Atenco.
Testimonies of
human rights violations by women
detained by police in Atenco.
- Americas.org
May 23, 2006
Added
May 23, 2006
Mexico
Mexico's National Human Rights
Commission Confirms 23 Rapes and Sexual
Assaults at Atenco
Confirma CNDH agresiones sexuales hacia
detenidas de Atenco
After confirming the 23 cases of sexual
aggression against the women protesters
of the San Savior Atenco protest, the
National Commission of Human Rights
(CNDH) has announced concerns about
irregularities in the elaboration of the
medical certificates for the detained
women.
Presenting their first report in regard
to the [May 3rd and 4th]
violence in Atenco, Susana de la Llave,
second inspector general of the CNDH
said that itself “all the elements exist
to presume that 23 women suffered sexual
attacks” during the events in Atenco.
Detailed minutes, medical opinions,
photos and videos have been documented
by the CNDH.
Susana de la Llave…
“The 23 women coincide in time, form and
place, but the description that do of
the sex abuse is different.”
“With this documentation, nobody can
allege that these women lied.”
Among the irregularities in the
elaboration of the medical certificates,
de la Llave said that the
documents lack of chronological order in
the description of the external wounds,
and they contain partial description of
wounds.
- Lourdes Godínez Leal
CimacNoticias
News for Women
Mexico City
May 22, 2006
Added
May 23, 2006
Mexico
CNDH: 23
Women Were Abused
Top
officials from the National Human Rights
Commission (CNDH) said on Monday that 23
cases of sexual abuse and rape have been
documented following the violent clash
between protesters and police in San
Salvador Atenco earlier this month.
- El Universal /
Miami Herald
Mexico City
May 23, 2006
Added
May 22, 2006<
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