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CANADA

Last Updated November 25, 2005

Racist Impunity's Long History in Canada

Index Inuit - Inuit mother and papoose (ViewImages) Thousands of girls and boys were raped and tortured, and many were murdered, in Canada's aboriginal boarding schools, most of which shut down in the 1970's.

The unchecked criminal violence suffered by these girls and boys has become a major cause of rampant child prostitution and other serious social ills among several generations of Canada's First Nations (Native/indigenous) peoples.  This violence is called genocide

Over 90,000 survivors of the Canadian church and government run aboriginal boarding schools exist.  Their stories are finally being heard by the public, despite efforts by those in power to silence any discussion of the issues.


Soul Wound: The legacy of Native American Schools

A 2001 report by the Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada documents the responsibility of the Roman Catholic Church, the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the federal government in the deaths of more than 50,000 Native children in the Canadian residential school system.

The report says church officials killed children by beating, poisoning, electric shock, starvation, prolonged exposure to sub-zero cold while naked, and medical experimentation, including the removal of organs and radiation exposure. In 1928 Alberta passed legislation allowing school officials to forcibly sterilize Native girls; British Columbia followed suit in 1933. There is no accurate toll of forced sterilizations because hospital staff destroyed records in 1995 after police launched an investigation. But according to the testimony of a nurse in Alberta, doctors sterilized entire groups of Native children when they reached puberty. The report also says that Canadian clergy, police, and business and government officials “rented out” children from residential schools to pedophile rings.


....Arnold Sylvester, who like Dennis Charlie attended Kuper Island school between 1939 and 1945, corroborates this account.

“The priests dug up the secret gravesite in a real hurry around 1972, when the school closed. No-one was allowed to watch them dig up those remains. I think it’s because that was a specially secret graveyard where the bodies of the pregnant girls were buried. Some of the girls who got pregnant from the priests were actually killed because they threatened to talk. They were sometimes shipped out and sometimes just disappeared. We weren’t allowed to talk about this.” (Testimony of Arnold Sylvester to Kevin Annett, Duncan, BC, August 13, 1998).

From: Hidden from History: The Canadian Holacaust (Microsoft Word Document).


"These crimes are alleged to have occurred for more than a century in the state-sponsored and church-run Indian Residential Schools which legally interred every Indian child across Canada between the years 1890 and 1984. During this period, more than 50,000 children died in these schools, according to the statistics of [the Canadian] Department of Indian Affairs. Most of the bodies of these dead children have never been located or recovered.

May 20, 2004, a representative of three major indigenous groups in Guatemala presents a formal protest letter to the Canadian Embassy in Guatemala City.


"Mass murder was done to my people and we demand to know where the churches buried the children who never came home from the residential schools. Innocent children were tortured, sterilized, and murdered. Their spirits will never rest until their remains are brought home to their own territory."

- pyouth_union (pseudonym)


Within Canada, indigenous women and children are sexually exploited with impunity.   The notorious residential school system is the most visible marker of sexual and physical violation perpetrated by a society against innocent girls and boys, for the 'crime' of being a "First Nations" person. 
 

 

Love and Death in the Valley is a contemporary David and Goliath tale that will inspire and challenge the reader. It is the personal story of Reverend Kevin Annett, the minister who single- handedly exposed the murder and genocide of aboriginal people by the government of Canada and his employer, the United Church of Canada. This book is his own gripping and passionate account of his heroic efforts against insurmountable odds to document hidden crimes among west coast native people after he began a ministry among them in Port Alberni, British Columbia in 1992.

 
Love and Death in the Valley

Reverend Kevin Annett (See Below)

ISBN: 1403348200

 

 
   Sacred Lives

Canadian Aboriginal Children and Youth Speak Out About Sexual Exploitation

By Save the Children Canada (See below)

Ninety percent of child prostitutes in Canada are indigenous (first nations).

 

 
Flowers on my grave : how an Ojibwa boy's death helped break the silence on child abuse.

Includes bibliography and references.

ISBN 0002554291 (A Phyllis Bruce Book, HarperCollins Publishers re: Lester Disarrays, 1974-1988.
Teichroeb, Ruth

 

 
Victims of benevolence: discipline & death at the Williams Lake Indian residential school, 1891-1920

Williams Lake, British Columbia. Cariboo Tribal Council. Includes bibliographical notes.

ISBN 0969663900. Library of Congress call no. E 96.6 .W54 F87 1992.


 

On the Rape of Indigenous Children with Impunity

 

Sexual abuse of First Nations [Canadian indigenous] children is at crisis proportions. This form of violence is a legacy of colonialism. As previously mentioned, residential schools held First Nations children captives. These children were terrorized sexually with no avenues of escape. When they were allowed to visit their families during holidays, these children often felt increasing loneliness and despair due to a widening sense of cultural estrangement, and abandonment. 

 

From: Lynne, Jackie 1998 "Colonialism and the Sexual Exploitation of Canada's First Nations women," paper presented at the American Psychological Association 106th Annual Convention, San Francisco, California, August 17, 1998.  Jackie Lynne is a social worker based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

 


"...There are a huge number of court cases coming through in this area. The abuse of children was so widespread, that it has formed part of Canada's general history. With newspaper reports of payments to exceed one billion dollars. 
 

.

 

News Articles


Added Nov. 25, 2005

Canada

Indigenous summit ends - Canada to pay US $1.7 billion to thousands of child sexual assault and torture victims of Canada's forced Native boarding school system.

Kelowna, British Columbia province - Prime Minister Paul Martin said Ottawa will spend more than $5 billion on a massive program intended to improve the lives of native people.

$US 1.7 billion will be used to pay thousands of former pupils at 130 forced boarding schools who were subjected to physical and sexual abuse spanning 70 years.

Beverly Jacobs, the president of the Native Women's Association, said there's nothing in this agreement to curb the alarming rate of violence against women.

Premier Martin has promised to hold a future summit on native women's issues.

- CBC News

Canada

Nov. 25, 2005


Added Nov. 25, 2005

Indepth: Aboriginal Canadians

- CBC News

Canada

Nov. 25, 2005


Added Nov. 25, 2005

Abuse payout for Native Canadians.

- BBC News

United Kingdom

Nov. 25, 2005


Added Nov. 25, 2005

Canada's troubled native children

Jul. 31, 2002

- BBC News

United Kingdom


Added Nov. 25, 2005

Canada to settle Indian abuse cases

30 Oct. 30, 2001

- BBC News

United Kingdom


Added Nov. 25, 2005

Abuse in Canada

28 Dec. 28, 2000

- BBC News

United Kingdom


Added Nov. 25, 2005

Canada

Indigenous summit begins

Kelowna, British Columbia -- Indigenous leaders are negotiating with Canadian officials regarding a multibillion-dollar plan to fight poverty  and settle damage claims for mistreatment.

Some 100,000 children were required to attend such residential schools over the past century, and the sad history of their abuse has long been cited by Indian leaders as the root cause of epidemic rates of alcoholism and drug addiction on reserves.

- Associated press

Nov. 25, 2005

 


May 31, 2005

Canada

 Government Funds $5 Million Study of Violence Against Native Women.


October 6, 2004

Aboriginals will Occupy Churches and Government Offices Across Canada to Recover Remains of their People.


October 4, 2004

Amnesty Slams Canada for Ignoring Murders of 500 Indigenous Women Over Last 30 Years.


October 4, 2004

"Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada" - Amnesty's Report Summary.


December 4, 2003

Vancouver British Columbia - 38-year-old Vancouver sex offender, Martin Tremblay, was sentenced in BC Supreme Court today. Tremblay received 3 and 1/2 years in custody and 18 months probation for sexually assaulting and videotaping 5 Aboriginal girls aged 13-15 at the time.

December 4, 2003 Press Release

- Justice for Girls

 

Hidden from History:
The Canadian Holocaust

The Untold Story of the Genocide of Aboriginal Peoples by Church and State in Canada

by (Rev.) Kevin Annett


Microsoft Word version of the full report:

HIDDEN FROM HISTORY

The Canadian Holocaust

The Untold Story of the Genocide of Aboriginal Peoples by Church and State in Canada

A Summary of an Ongoing, Independent Inquiry into Canadian Native “Residential Schools” and their Legacy


Kevin Arnett's Web Pages on the Canadian Indigenous Genocide:

http://canadiangenocide.nativeweb.org/index.html

http://hiddenfromhistory.org/


Late 2004 Additions to Kevin Arnett's Web Pages:

 

Links to Articles Discussing the Historical Background of School-Based Anto-Indigenous Genocide in Canada

 

(Added December 27, 2003)

Canada and the United States: 

Soul Wound: The legacy of Native American Schools

[About the rape and torture with impunity of Canadian and United States indigenous youth in government and church-run residential schools.]

[In addition to the true history of the sexual assault perpetrated against indigenous Canadian girls and boys for decades, it must be noted that a similar system existed, on perhaps a lesser scale, within the United States.  This article addresses both 'systems' of the systematic rape and torture of children.]

[In Canada:]

A more complete history of the abuses endured by Native American children exists in the accounts of survivors of Canadian “residential schools.” Canada imported the U.S. boarding school model in the 1880s and maintained it well into the 1970s—four decades after the United States ended its stated policy of forced enrollment. Abuses in Canadian schools are much better documented because survivors of Canadian schools are more numerous, younger, and generally more willing to talk about their experiences.

A 2001 report by the Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada documents the responsibility of the Roman Catholic Church, the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the federal government in the deaths of more than 50,000 Native children in the Canadian residential school system.

The report says church officials killed children by beating, poisoning, electric shock, starvation, prolonged exposure to sub-zero cold while naked, and medical experimentation, including the removal of organs and radiation exposure. In 1928 Alberta passed legislation allowing school officials to forcibly sterilize Native girls; British Columbia followed suit in 1933. There is no accurate toll of forced sterilizations because hospital staff destroyed records in 1995 after police launched an investigation. But according to the testimony of a nurse in Alberta, doctors sterilized entire groups of Native children when they reached puberty. The report also says that Canadian clergy, police, and business and government officials “rented out” children from residential schools to pedophile rings.

The consequences of sexual abuse can be devastating. “Of the first 29 men who publicly disclosed sexual abuse in Canadian residential schools, 22 committed suicide,” says Gerry Oleman, a counselor to residential school survivors in British Columbia.

Randy Fred (Tsehaht First Nation), a 47-year-old survivor, told the British Columbia Aboriginal Network on Disability Society, “We were kids when we were raped and victimized. All the plaintiffs I’ve talked with have attempted suicide. I attempted suicide twice, when I was 19 and again when I was 20. We all suffered from alcohol abuse, drug abuse. Looking at the lists of students [abused in the school], at least half the guys are dead.”

The Truth Commission report says that the grounds of several schools contain unmarked graveyards of murdered school children, including babies born to Native girls raped by priests and other church officials in the school. Thousands of survivors and relatives have filed lawsuits against Canadian churches and governments since the 1990s, with the costs of settlements estimated at more than $1 billion. Many cases are still working their way through the court system.

[In the United States:]

Rampant sexual abuse at reservation schools continued until the end of the 1980s, in part because of pre-1990 loopholes in state and federal law mandating the reporting of allegations of child sexual abuse. In 1987 the FBI found evidence that John Boone, a teacher at the BIA-run Hopi day school in Arizona, had sexually abused as many as 142 boys from 1979 until his arrest in 1987. The principal failed to investigate a single abuse allegation. Boone, one of several BIA schoolteachers caught molesting children on reservations in the late 1980s, was convicted of child abuse, and he received a life sentence. Acting BIA chief William Ragsdale admitted that the agency had not been sufficiently responsive to allegations of sexual abuse, and he apologized to the Hopi tribe and others whose children BIA employees had abused.

 

(Added December 30, 2003)

British Columbia, Canada

Native Men Tell of Rape

...A hushed BC Supreme Court heard a 44 year-old native man tell Monday of being raped by a dormitory supervisor at the Alberni Residential Shool when he was 10 years old. Dennis Thomas was testifying at the first day of the second phase of the lawsuit by two dozen former students. They're seeking compensation for sexual and physical abuse. In the first phase, the federal government and the United Church of Canada were found "vicariously liable" as the employer/operator of the school for the assaults. The second phase deals with direct liability and the issue of knowledge...

 

(Added December 27, 2003)

Canada:

The Indian Residential School Survivor's Society

[About the rape and torture with impunity of Canadian indigenous youth in government and church-run residential schools.]

...Psychological and emotional abuses were constant: shaming by public beatings of naked children, vilification of native culture, constant racism, public strip and genital searches, withholding presents and letters from family, locking children in closets and cages, segregation of sexes, separation of bothers and sisters, proscription of native languages and spirituality. In addition, the schools were places of profound physical and sexual violence: sexual assaults, forced abortions of staff-impregnated girls, needles inserted into tongues for speaking a native language, burning, scalding, beating until unconscious and/or inflicting permanent injury.

**

Psychological and emotional abuses were constant: shaming by public beatings of naked children, vilification of native culture, constant racism, public strip and genital searches, withholding presents and letters from family, locking children in closets and cages, segregation of sexes, separation of bothers and sisters, proscription of native languages and spirituality. In addition, the schools were places of profound physical and sexual violence: sexual assaults, forced abortions of staff-impregnated girls, needles inserted into tongues for speaking a native language, burning, scalding, beating until unconscious and/or inflicting permanent injury.

They also endured electrical shock, force-feeding of their own vomit when sick, exposure to freezing outside temperatures, withholding of medical attention, shaved heads (a cultural and social violation), starvation (as punishment), forced labor in unsafe work situations, intentional contamination with diseased blankets, insufficient food for basic nutrition and/or spoiled food. Estimates suggest that as many as 60% of the students died (due to illness, beatings, attempts to escape, or suicide) while in the schools.

**

...Today, approximately 90,000 survivors in their thirties and older are trying to understand, heal from, and move beyond this devastating experience. About 14% are involved in some form of litigation while the other 86% are living out their lives as best they can.

"What I remember of that time was passing Muncho Lake on the trip up north, [to residential school] and imagining I was drowning. That is where I left my life; I drowned in Muncho Lake. I haven't forgiven my parents to this day because...they weren't there to protect me."

Survivor, Kamloops School
2000

It is generally accepted that the forced removal of children from their families was devastating for Aboriginal individuals, families, communities and cultures. This is regularly being confirmed by researchers today.

First Nation communities experience higher rates of violence: physical, domestic abuse (3x higher than mainstream society); sexual abuse: rape, incest, etc. (4-6x higher); lack of family and community cohesion; suicide (6x higher); addictions: drugs, alcohol, food; health problems: diabetes (3x higher), heart disease, obesity; poverty; unemployment; illiteracy; high school dropout (63% do not graduate); despair; hopelessness; and more.

The Indian Residential School Survivors Society was formed to provide help, hope, healing and honor for those adult children who are still seeking resolution in their lives. If you wish to email any of our staff please go to our staff and email page.

 

(Added December 27, 2003)

Canada: 

Abuse in the aboriginal residential schools in Canada & the Mushkegowuk Cree of Fort Albany, Ontario - Abstract

[About the rape and torture with impunity of Canadian indigenous youth in government and church-run residential schools.]

This is a 10 page paper discussing abuse in Aboriginal residential schools in Canada and in particular that in Fort Albany, Ontario. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in Canada, the federal government in partnership with a number of religious organizations ran over 130 “residential schools” for Aboriginals. 

Originally intended to promote the assimilation of the Aboriginal people within white society, by the time the majority of the schools closed in the 1960s and 1970s, it soon became obvious that in addition to religion and education being promoted within the schools, so too was a horrific amount of physical and sexual abuse being performed. Generations of Aboriginals who passed through the schools have suffered a great deal from the abuse and are trying within their own communities to heal from their ordeals.

 

(Added December 27, 2003)

Canada: 

Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools in Canada

[About the rape and torture with impunity of Canadian indigenous youth in government and church-run residential schools.]

There are a huge number of court cases coming through in this area. The abuse of children was so widespread, that it has formed part of Canada's general history. With newspaper reports of payments to exceed one billion dollars. But the cost in human life, in human suffering - is beyond any words that I can write. Native Law does not provide legal counsel. This page is for educational (bibliographic) purposes only.

[This document contains over 90 bibliographic references to to Canadian residential school sexual assault issue.]

 

Apri 27, 2003 

Ex-residential school student files suit. CANADA: A middle-aged Yukon man is suing the federal government and the Catholic Church for abuses he says he suffered at the hands of priests responsible for his care during his days at the Lower Post, B.C. residential school. The lawsuit was filed with the Yukon Supreme Court earlier this month. In it, the 57-year-old first nation man says he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by two boys' dorm supervisors over an eight-year period. The man would have been five or six when the abuse started in September 1952. It didn't end until June 1960. While he's suing the Attorney General of Canada, the Catholic Episcopal Corporation of Whitehorse, four religious orders and the priest in charge of the school, it's the two dorm supervisors who were responsible for the abuse, the lawsuit alleges. 

-- Whitehorse Star, "Ex-residential school student files suit," 

From: www.whitehorsestar.com/ , by Sarah Elizabeth Brown, (Poynteronline, Posted by Kathy Shaw, Apr 27 03)

 

May 14, 2003

Denomination Thwarts Bankruptcy 

From: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/005/14.25.html

Christianity Today: CANADA: The Anglican Church of Canada has made a deal with the Canadian government that leaders hope will keep the denomination from bankruptcy. The agreement, signed on March 11, caps the church's financial responsibility at $25 million for lawsuits alleging physical and sexual abuse in Indian residential schools (CT, Jan. 7, 2002, p. 20). The Anglican Church will be responsible for 30 percent of compensation awarded in validated cases of abuse; the federal government will pay the other 70 percent. Although only 11 dioceses ran schools, all 30 are taking responsibility for compensating victims. "I'm very pleased and, in a way, amazed that dioceses so quickly could mobilize themselves to make decisions," said Archdeacon Jim Boyles, the church's general secretary and chief negotiator. The agreement puts pending court cases into an alternative dispute resolution process. This will include counselling, pastoral care, therapy and legal advice, says Anglican Archdeacon Larry Beardy, a member of the negotiating team.

 

Canada - October 5, 2002 - Poverty leads to prostitution

EDMONTON -- A large number of aboriginal women work in the sex trade out of poverty -- and their children follow in their footsteps, say outreach workers.

 

From:

Advocacy e-Mail Newsletter  1998-2001 - Chuck Goolsby

1-Subject: Young Indian Children in Saskatchewan, Canada Sexually Exploited

From: cmg_jr@ix.netcom.com

Date: 01/28/01 09:55:34

Subject: Young Indian Children in Saskatchewan, 

Canada Sexually Exploited


 8-year-old prostitutes stun Saskatchewan politicians

 © 2001 Toronto Globe’s Mail, Canadian Press, Regina  

January 6, 2001

Children as young as eight years old are selling sex on Saskatchewan's streets, social Services officials told shocked politicians yesterday in an all-party committee studying the problem.

Saskatoon police have witnessed johns trying to buy sex from four and five-year-olds, said Randy Pritchard, Social Services’ senior program consultant.  

Mr. Pritchard said poverty and peer pressure play a big part in children ending up on the street.  

He said youngsters use the money they make as prostitutes to buy things they are not getting at home, such as drugs, make-up and clothes.  

They also feel as though they belong to a family of sorts on the street, he said, and sometimes lure their friends or younger siblings into the same work.  

Street children typically miss a lot of school, have substance-abuse problems and are coping with sexual and physical abuse at home, said Dan Perrins, deputy minister of social Services.

“The reason they choose street life is because the alternative is worse, and unfortunately the alternative is home,” he said.  

Johns may be seeking out younger sex partner because they think children are less likely to carry sexually transmitted diseases, suggested Laura Bourassa, Crown counsel from the justice Department.

But she added, “You only need to have one sexual encounter to risk getting a sexually transmitted disease.  The chances are you are not the child’s first sexual encounter.”  

She estimated that as many as 200 children-most of them aboriginal-are working in each of Saskatchewan’s two major cities and as many as 85 are in Prince Albert. 

 

From:

Advocacy e-Mail Newsletter  1998-2001 - Chuck Goolsby

2-Subject: Aboriginals make up majority of young prostitutes (About the report "Sacred Lives, Canadian Aboriginal Children & Youth Speak Out About Sexual Exploitation" - see article #4 also.)

12/06/2000 - © 2000 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

 

Date: 12/06/00 00:40:28

Subject: Indigenous youth make up 90 percent of

Canada's child, teen prostitutes.

  

Dear friends of human rights - FYI. 

Chuck Goolsby

Date:    12/06/00 00:08:27

 

Subject: Re: Aboriginals make up majority of young prostitutes

 

Hi L.,

 

Thank you much for this information.  I guess you know that I have, in the past, made the same point.  Not a nice point to make, and one that goes against cultural currents that stress covering up any reality that can cause an individual embarrassment within those cultures.

 

In the age of HIV/AIDS, those codes of silence have to end, or the sexual oppression of indigenous youth, which is common throughout all regions in the Americas, will cause a permanent end to the indigenous peoples affected.  To stop that result, people must begin to speak up and defend our young people.

  

People of conscience everywhere need to

understand that reality as it relates to youth of

all racial and ethnic backgrounds.  

 

 - Chuck Goolsby

 


 

Aboriginals make up majority of young

prostitutes

 

© 2000 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Dec 4, 2000

 

OTTAWA - A government report has found that

up to 90 per cent of child and teen prostitutes in

Canada are aboriginal.   The 97-page report,

called "Sacred Lives," says the aboriginal

community faces unacceptable risks of being

dragged into the commercial sex trade.  

 

Risk on the street

 

The study, which includes interviews with 150

aboriginal youth who have been sexually

exploited, says it's vital for them to re-establish

cultural connections.  The report was done by

Save the Children Canada and the federal

government and released on Monday.  

 

The authors, Cherry Kingsley and Melanie

Mark, found that widespread racism,

declining culture, and crushing poverty

are among the reasons native youth end

up on the streets.  

 

One native youth interviewed in the report

said they're targets for prostitution because

they're vulnerable and used to the exploitation.

 

Kingsley and Mark, who are both native,

travelled across Canada for five months to do

the study.  

 

"It was a really haunting, gruelling

experience," Kingsley said on Monday.

"These young people came forward with the

hope things would be different and they

deserve a response," she said.

 

The report recommends a series of round-

table discussions and building a national

youth network.

 

"There's no sex trade in the world that can

survive unless we let it collectively, and it's

thriving," Kingsley said.

 

Last month, an international report suggested

a lack of government planning is turning

Canada into a hot spot for the sexual

exploitation of children.

 

 

From:

Advocacy e-Mail Newsletter  1998-2001 - Chuck Goolsby

Subject: Indian Lawsuits on School Abuse

May Bankrupt Canada Churches (Excerpt)

 

Date: 11/02/00 12:30:28

 

Subject: Canadian indigenous boarding school rape victim lawsuits to bankrupt Canadian churches

 

Dear friends of human rights,  

 

The use of violent sexual assault as a tool of the oppression of indigenous (Indian/Native) women, minor girls and boys and even men, has been a feature of life in the Americas since 1492.  Within the U.S., numerous government and church run boarding schools have been the location of mass rapes of Indian children.  Several years ago, over 400 children in a

school in the Southwest were the victims of such assaults.  A Lakota psychologist found, in the 1970's, a school in the U.S. Northwest where 80 of the 120 girl boarding school students had been raped by non-Indians from the local town.  All over Latin America, many indigenous women and minor girls continue to

suffer the fate that their mothers and grand-mothers have suffered since 1492 at the hands of men who rape them with impunity.  

 

These policies, together with the actions of the U.S. Indian Health Service in their forced sterilization campaign against indigenous women, in which 70,000 women were victimized in the 1960's and 1970's,

represents genocidal violence that has been perpetrated with impunity.

  

A couple of years ago, a Canadian indigenous chief spoke on CBC, the Canadian Broadcast System, heard locally in DC on WAMU FM, a public radio station.  This chief related how he, after being forced to go to a religious run boarding school, was subjected to routine beatings, electric shock and RAPE, from the

age of 12, perpetrated by clerics at the school.

 

Please find here below an excerpt of the beginning of an article from the November 2, 2000 edition of the New York Times regarding this issue in Canada.  

 

As the descendant of Catawba and Muskogee Creek peoples who also faced this racist madness, I encourage all of you to act, in this day and age, to assist the women and minor girls in our local communities who continue to suffer sexual assault from men who act with brazen impunity.  Why?  In many cases, it is because indigenous women and girls are not viewed as having even the right to their own bodies, nor to the human dignity and protection from crime that we take for granted.  

 

Sincerely,

 

 

- Chuck Goolsby

 

 

Other Resources from www.ReligiousTolerance.org

Books on residential schools:

  • Constance Deiter, "From Our Mothers' Arms."  Out of print but may be available through public libraries.

  • Suzanne Fournier and Ernie Grey, "Stolen From Our Embrace: The abduction of First Nations children and the restoration of aboriginal communities," Out of print, but a used copy can often be ordered

  • Agnes Grant, "No End of Grief: Indian Residential Schools in Canada," Pemmican Publications, (1996). Read reviews / order this book.

  • Jim Miller, "Shingwauk's Vision," University of Toronto Press, (1996). Read reviews / order this book safely from Amazon.com online bookstore.

  • John Molloy, "A National Crime: Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879-1986," Can be ordered from http://www.chapters.ca

  • Ruth Teichroeb, "Flowers on my grave : how an Ojibwa boy's death helped break the silence on child abuse," HarperCollins,  Read reviews / order this book. This book describes the brief life of Lester Desjarlais, (1974-1988).

  • Books by the Williams Lake, B.C. Cariboo Tribal Council:

    • "A conspiracy of silence: The care of the Native students at St. Joseph's residential school," (1991).

    • "Victims of benevolence: discipline & death at the Williams Lake Indian residential school, 1891-1920," ISBN 0969663900. 

  • Grant, Peter R. "Settling residential schools claims: litigation or mediation" in Aboriginal Writes, Canadian Bar Association National Aboriginal Law Section, 1998-JAN.
 
Related Issues:

School Exploitation Across Canada & the Americas


Forced Sterilization Across Canada & the Americas


The indigenous of the United States


LibertadLatina.org's Indigenous Latin  America Index

Indigenous Americas - "In situations of armed conflict, abuse against indigenous or other minority group girls and women tends to be particularly cruel. In periods of armed conflict in Latin America, violence against women - especially rape - has been rampant..." 

"In Guatemala, political violence left 150,000 [mostly Mayan] dead and 50,000 disappeared during the 1980s, as well as 200,000 orphans, 40,000 widows, and between 400,000 and one million displaced."

..."In many parts of the world, rape is being used as a weapon of war to terrorize the civil population. In Mexico, during the first years of conflict in Chiapas, 50 rape cases against indigenous women were reported."

From: UNICEF and the AIDS Information Exchange Newsletter

Note: Chiapas, Mexico and Mayan Guatemala are one continuous region.

About this Crisis - The indigenous of Latin America - Index - El Salvador

The El Mozote Massacre (El Salvador): The women were disposed of next. "First they picked out the young girls and took them away to the hills," where they were raped before being killed, Amaya reported. "Then they picked out the old women and took them to Israel Marquez's house on the square. We heard the shots there."

The children died last. "An order arrived from a Lt. Caceres to Lt. Ortega to go ahead and kill the children too," Amaya observed. "A soldier said 'Lieutenant, somebody here says he won't kill children.' 'Who's the sonofabitch who said that?' the lieutenant answered. 'I am going to kill him.' I could hear them shouting from where I was crouching in the tree."

About this Crisis - The indigenous of Latin America - Index - Peru

About this Crisis - The indigenous of Latin America - Index - Guatemala

El Rio Negro (The Mayan Community of Black River, Guatemala) Massacre

"The soldiers and the (paramilitary civil defense) patrollers started grabbing the girls and raping us," recalls Ana, one of a handful of survivors of the massacre. "Only two soldiers raped me because my grandmother was there to defend me. All the girls were raped."

In total, 177 women and children died that day. The village, one of the most far flung of Rabinal municipality in Baja Verapaz province [Guatemala], disappeared.


Other Related Issues in the Americas

LibertadLatina.org's Latin America Index

Mexico Index

Columbia Index


Slavery Index

A New LibertadLatina Index of Indigenous and Latina Women & Child Sex Slavery Issues Listed by Region and Date.

-  Added December 20, 2004

 

 

 
     

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Added: May 27, 2009

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Analysis of the political actions and policies of Mexico's National Action Party (PAN) in regard to their detrimental impact on women's basic human rights



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Added: July 03, 2009

LibertadLatina Commentary

This protest poster says: "We won't be silent, and they will not silence us; Feminists of Honduras!"

Photo:  Feminist International Radio Endeavor (FIRE)

We at LibertadLatina join with humanity in expressing our complete outrage at the leaders of the coup d'etat in Honduras. The leaders of the coup were not justified in kidnapping the democratically elected president of the nation and sending him into exile. The United Nations General Assembly, the Organization of American States and U.S. President Barak Obama, among many leaders of nations in the Americas, have all joined in demanding that President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales be returned to power.

Although the coup was approved by Honduran Supreme Court and Congress, this only shows that the nation's democratic institutions are weak. In Colombia, for example, President Álvaro Uribe, a conservative, is seeking, just as did President Zelaya in Honduras, to change the constitution to eliminate the current limits on the number of terms that a president may serve. Yet nobody is trying to overthrow Uribe for have proposed such an idea. The fact that President Zelaya had set-up a popular referendum, to allow the voters to decide the issue, was apparently too much democracy for the coup plotters, so they pounced on Zelaya and raped democracy in the process.

The independent press, including Feminist Radio International Endeavor (FIRE), CIMAC Noticias in Mexico City, and Indymedia Chiapas, have provided excellent coverage of the true story that is taking place inside Honduras. Some of the key stories are reprinted here.

The coup leaders have declared a state of siege, have targeted human rights activists, and have used rifle fire to attack unarmed protesters who are simply outraged that these cowards have resorted to taking power by force.

Coups were a common power-grabbing tactic in Latin America in the late 1900s. The region has since made significant progress in moving towards democracy. This coup is just one of many indicators that democracy is not a 'done deal' in all nations of the Americas.

The conservative coup plotters will, consistent with the emergent anti women's rights movement represented elsewhere in Latin America (with whom they are apparently allied), not bode well for women's equality.

We applaud the activism that we are seeing from brave women and men in the face of this military repression. Just as happened during the popular uprisings against dictators across Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s, the coup leaders in Honduras are using the tactics of the 'dirty wars' that lead to the murders and rapes of tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, Mexico and other nations of Latin America.

Video from a number of sources shows the terrorism with impunity that the coup's military supporters are using on innocent protesters.

See especially this YouTube video posted on Narco News web site that records the rifle fire of soldiers who were shooting into crowds of protesters, as well as an interview with a congressional representative as she visits wounded at a local hospital and expresses her indignation at the coup.

It is an act of cowardice for the current Honduran coup government to block CCN in Spanish, block the Internet, and place Honduras in a stage of siege with a suspension of all individual liberties. Given the repression that just occurred in the aftermath of presidential elections in Iran, the world community has very little tolerance for  such illegal behavior in Honduras.

Coup leaders, return President Zelaya to his elected position.

Nobody elected you.

Your corrupt government is not wanted and it will not stand!

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

July 3, 2009


Added: July 03, 2009

Honduras

Banner: "Feminists in Resistance; Coup leaders get out!

Photo: CIMAC Noticias

Urge mayor presión a golpistas: feministas hondureñas

Lideresa pro-vida, designada canciller por golpistas 

Ante el Estado de Emergencia en Honduras, feministas y luchadoras sociales lanzaron un llamado a la comunidad internacional para que pronuncien una condena más enérgica contra lo que denominaron gobierno usurpador; “nos están disparando, golpeando, violentando todos nuestros derechos”, denunciaron…

Honduran Feminists Urge Greater International Pressure Against Coup Leaders

A female pro-life leader has been appointed foreign affairs chancellor by the usurpers

In the face of the state of siege that has been declared in Honduras, feminists and social activists have launched an appeal to the international community to deliver a strong condemnation against what they termed a usurper government. They state that: “We are being shot, beaten, and they are violating all of our rights.”

In a telephone interview with CIMAC Noticias, Hilda Rivera, coordinator of the Center for Women's Rights in Honduras, said that support from Latin America and the global community is urgently needed. Yesterday, the National Congress of Honduras approved a State of Emergency, temporarily suspending individual liberties...

"...We are urging more pressure from the world community, because the situation is becoming more violent here” says Rivera.

"Policemen and soldiers are shooting and beating us. It is urgent that the government not be given additional time [to consider ultimatums to step down]. We have put up with four days of bullets, beatings and rain. There is a general tiredness in the population. Nonetheless, the violence is increasing, so we are standing up to fight.”

Rivera stated that the coup is a serious setback for the entire society, and particularly for women, who’s rights were already restricted. With this coup, the problem is magnified...

Until now, "within the feminist movement we have not anticipated everything that may happen, but we are clear in our understanding that, with this ‘law of the strongest,’ we can be detained, they can raid our offices and homes, and we cannot assemble. It is of grave concern to us that we have important issues on our agenda that are threatened by the coup, such as the legalization of emergency contraception." ...

A central concern for Rivera is the safety of human rights defenders. “The government has already begun to ‘hunt’ various organization leaders by raiding their houses and arresting them." The coup plotters know that  women do not falter in our struggle. There is a danger that repression against feminist leaders may follow.

As an example that the coup government is not interested in defending the rights of women, Rivera cites the naming of the founder of Provida [Pro Life] in Honduras as Foreign Affairs Chancellor.

Eco-feminist Daysi Flores told Feminist International Radio (RIF) that the people are afraid and outraged. They cannot come out of their homes. But, says Flores, feminist resistance has been declared. Women’s rights are going to continue to progress, and we are going to continue the struggle.

Full English Translation

Gladis Torres Ruiz

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico City

July 2, 2009


Added: July 03, 2009

Honduras

Comunicado de grupos y organizaciones del Movimiento de Mujeres y Feminista de Honduras 

A Las Organizaciones Internacionales,  Cooperación Internacional, Organismos de Derechos Humanos y a lLos Estados del Mundo

El día domingo 28 de Junio, el Presidente de la República José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, fue agredido, secuestrado y enviado a la República de Costa Rica en el avión presidencial, custodiado por cuerpos militares argumentando que había violado la Constitución de la República por implementar una consulta popular mediante una encuesta de opinión, donde se consultara al pueblo si estaba de acuerdo o no que el 29 de noviembre se colocara una cuarta urna para proponer una Asamblea Nacional Constituyente, que tuviese como objetivo elaborar una nueva Constitución con la plena participación ciudadana de los diferentes actores sociales del país…

Statement By Feminist And Women¹s Organizations From Honduras Following the Coup D‘Etat

To International Organizations, International Development Agencies, Human Rights Institutions And To The States Of The World:

On Sunday, June 28, 2009 the democratically elected President of the Republic of Honduras, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, was assaulted, abducted and sent to the Republic of Costa Rica in the presidential plane guarded by the military...

The people are peacefully expressing their rejection of the coup d’etat, demanding the immediate reinstatement of President Zelaya, and a return to the Rule of Law...

Given these egregious series of events, we request the support of international development agencies and the international community to demand the reinstatement of the Rule of Law, to demand an end to the prosecution of the members of the cabinet of President Manuel Zelaya Rosales and leaders of social movements and the media, and an end to all types of brutal violence and to prevent the imposition of fascism in our country. 

Most Honduran citizens advocate for peace, solidarity and the respect of human rights.  We emphatically denounce the complicity shown in these events by the Human Rights Commissioner of Honduras, Dr. Ramón Custodio, before the regional and international human rights organizations and the international community.

June 29, 2009

Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Signed:

Centro De Estudios De La Mujer ­ Honduras (Cem-H) - The Women's Studies Center

Centro De Derechos De Mujeres (Cdm) - The Center for Women's Rights

Centro De Estudios Y Accion Para El Desarrollo De Honduras (Cesadeh) - The Center for Development Studies and Action of Honduras

Red De Mujeres Jovenes (Redmuj) - The Young Women's Network

Acciones Para El Desarrollo Poblacional (Adp) - Action for Population Development

Red De Mujeres Adultas (Redmucr) - The Adult Women's Network

Colectivo De Mujeres Universitarias (Cofemun) - The Collective of University Women

Marcha Mundial De Las Mujeres, Comité Nacional - Honduras Global Women's March - Honduras

Articulaciones Feminista De Redes Locales - Articulation of Local Feminist Networks

Comisión De Mujer Pobladora Articulaciones Feminista De Redes Locales -  - Rural Women's Commission - Articulation of Local Feminist Networks

Movimiento De Mujeres Socialistas, Las Lolas - The Socialist Women's Movement, The Lolas

Convergencia De Mujeres De Honduras Iniciativa Centroamericana De Seguimiento A Cairo Y Beijing - The Honduran Convergence of the Central American Initiative to Follow-up on Cairo and Beijing

Feministas Independientes - Independent Feminists

Published by Feminist International Radio Endeavor (FIRE)

June 29, 2009


Added: July 02, 2009

Honduras

"Feminists in Resistance" Photo: CIMAC Noticias

Vive Honduras una insurrección popular contra usurpadores

Berta Cazares, candidata independiente a la presidencia

México DF - Vivimos en Honduras una insurrección popular, un levantamiento con la decidida participación de las mujeres, en contra de las fuerzas armadas y el grupo oligárquico que derrocó al presidente democráticamente electo Manuel Zelaya, pero el costo es alto y la situación de la población civil, incluida la niñez, es crítica, la vida cotidiana está alterada y la brutal represión tiene como blanco principal a la juventud…

Honduras is Experiencing a Popular Uprising Against the Usurpers

An interview with Berta Cazares, independent candidate for president

Honduras is living through a popular uprising, one that is being carried out with the wholehearted participation of women against the armed forces and the oligarchic group which overthrew democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. The cost has been high, and the situation for civilians, including children, is critical. Everyday life has changed, and the brutal repression is targeting our youth.

Bertha Cazares Flores, an independent candidate for president of Honduras and the national leader of the Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, described the situation in Honduras in a phone interview with CIMAC Noticias, three days after the military high command, most of Congress and the Supreme Court overthrew the President and his Cabinet…

Hundreds have been injured in the country, especially young people, said Cazares. In the 'Progress City' (Ciudad Progreso) area, the repression was especially brutal, perhaps because that area has historically been a center for social struggles...

In rural and indigenous areas of Honduras the situation is quite critical, including in [the town of] San Francisco de Ocaña, where, during the 1980s, the Army used machine guns against the civilian population. "That's where the resources should go, to see what is really happening there," Cazares says.

Cazares added that the people continue to defy the siege, the curfew and the ban on travel. There are military checkpoints throughout the country. Hundreds of people from rural areas, teachers and indigenous people, are moving toward to the capital...

Thursday

CIMAC: What should we expect on Thursday, the day announced by Manuel Zelaya for his return to Honduras? [The planned return date for President Zelaya has been pushed back to Saturday since this story was written. - LL]

Cazares: We call upon social movements and organizations that defend international human rights to come to Honduras in delegations, to support the civilian population...

We hope that [Mayan Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize laureate] Rigoberta Menchú, along with other personalities such as Mirna Anaya, a judge on the Supreme Court of El Salvador, and [Argentinean 1980 Nobel Peace Prize leareate] Adolfo Perez Esquivel will arrive [to support President Zelaya].

Meanwhile, Berta is preparing - with an arrest warrant against her and the knowledge that "assassination is a terrible thing in Honduras" - for progress to be made today, Wednesday, when civic organizations will protest against the coup at an army cordon, just three blocks from the house that she one day hopes to govern from.

Full English Translation

Guadalupe Gomez Quintana

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico City

July 1 2009

See also:

Informan de batallones hondureños que se niegan a reprimir al pueblo

Radio Progreso, pese a ser acallada por los militares golpistas, confirmó en una de sus transmisiones clandestinas que varios batallones de las Fuerzas Armadas de Honduras, desde el lunes han roto con los golpistas y el gobierno de facto, y han anunciado que permanecerán al margen de la represión al pueblo de su país...

Honduran Army Battalions Reject Repressing the Population

Honduran station Radio Progreso, despite being shut-down by the coup leaders, has confirmed in one of its clandestine transmissions that a number of battalions of the Armed Forces of Honduras have, since Monday, June 29th, broken with the organizers of the coup d'etat and the de facto government. They have announced that they will remain on the sidelines of the repression...

 Radio La Primerísima

Managua, Nicaragua

June 30, 2009


Added: July 1, 2009

Chile

President Michelle Bachelet of Chile, during a June 23, 2009 visit with U.S. President Barak Obama

Bachelet Remueve a Jefe Policial

La presidenta de Chile, Michelle Bachelet, removió al jefe de la policia de investigaciones (civil), Arturo Herrera, tras una serie de denuncias de corrupción, incluida una que involucró a policías con una red de prostitución infantile…

Hace una semana, en el aniversario 76 de la policía de investigaciones, Herrera lamentó la relevancia dada por medios de difusión al caso de prostitución infantil que involucró a un grupo de policías activos.

Bachelet Removes Police Chief

The president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, has removed the chief of the Investigations Police, Arturo Herrera, after a series of allegations of corruption, including a case in which police officers were allegedly involved with a child prostitution network.

Herrera resigned the post three months before his scheduled retirement. He did so after a telephone conversation with the president, held while she was visiting Mexico.

Upon her return to Chile the president accepted the resignation and appointed as his replacement Marco Antonio Vasquez, now police chief in the region of Bío Bío, 500 kilometers south of Santiago…

A week ago, during the 76th anniversary of the Investigations Police agency, Herrera lamented the importance that the media had given to a case of child prostitution involving a group of police officers.

www.ansa.it/ansalatina

June 29, 2009

See also:

Director of Chile's Investigation Police Steps Down

Americas Quarterly Online

June 26, 2009

See also:

LibertadLatina

Our January, 2006 news page, which contains articles about Chile's first woman president, pediatrician Dr. Michelle Bachelet, who along with her mother was imprisoned and tortured by former dictator Agosto Pinochet's forces. Bachelet's father, an air force general, was tortured to death under the Pinochet regime.


Added: June 30, 2009

Texas, USA, Mexico

Man handed 5 years in sex trafficking

A former registered nurse was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison for engaging in what was the first and so far only federal sex-trafficking case in San Antonio.

Brent Andrew Stephens, 41, who surrendered his nursing license amid the criminal case, pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to harbor aliens for financial gain and conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion…

Stephens admitted that he and his business partner, Timothy Gereb, planned to use young Mexican women as escorts and in a massage parlor in May 2007.

The two paid Stephens' personal assistant, Maria de Jesus “Jessica” Ochoa; her sister, Consuelo Pilar Ochoa; and their mother, Isabel, to recruit and smuggle females from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, to San Antonio.

The Ochoas smuggled three victims, including two minors, and took them to Stephens. The victims were given alcohol, threatened at gunpoint by Gereb and warned not to return to Mexico, court documents state…

The victims told agents that once they arrived in San Antonio, they were told they would have to work as prostitutes for five years to pay the $3,000 smuggling fees…

Gereb, 50, was sentenced earlier to 10 years in prison. Isabel Ochoa, 60, received time served. Consuelo Ochoa, 34, was sentenced to 18 months for the sex-trafficking case and 39 months for a separate drug case. Maria Ochoa, 32, got 12 months and one day and is now out of jail.

Guillermo Contreras

Express-New

June 25, 2009


Added: July 01, 2009

Florida, USA

Lee County at Forefront of Slavery Fight

"We're light years ahead of other communities," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Molloy, who's prosecuted 20 slavery and human trafficking cases throughout Southwest Florida over the past decade, freeing 50 victims. "Because of our united community efforts, we're in a place most areas aspire to."

Those efforts include a two-man team at the Lee County Sheriff's Office, a multi-agency task force and a new command center at Florida Gulf Coast University: The Esperanza Project.

"What's happening at FGCU is electric - just electric," Molloy said.

One of a scant handful of university-based human trafficking research centers in the country, it opened eight months ago with $100,000 in seed money from a federal anti-trafficking grant given to the Lee County Sheriff's Office.

The center's name means "hope" in Spanish. It's also the pseudonym of the 11-year-old girl whose enslavement in Cape Coral became a galvanizing force as Lee county's first high-profile victim.

In 2005, the girl was discovered in Cape Coral, pregnant and bleeding. Born in Guatemala, she was sold to a man who brought her here and forced her into sexual and domestic slavery. She was repeatedly raped and beaten during her two-year captivity. Molloy eventually sent her captors to federal prison.

Her case sparked a wave of questions and self-examination among law enforcement and residents alike.

In short order, the Sanibel chapter of Zonta International, a service group, made human trafficking its signature cause.

The U.S. Department of Justice awarded the Lee County Sheriff's Office a $450,000, three-year grant to combat human trafficking.

By the end of 2005, Molloy said authorities were working on more trafficking cases in Southwest Florida than many entire state sees in a year…

"(The U.S.) spends about about $23 million on this annually - that's not much at all,"... "Estimates are there are about 17,000 [new] foreign-born trafficking victims alone [each and every year] and 17,000 homicide victims, and yet we solve 70 percent of the homicides and 1 percent of trafficking cases." ...

The man in the No. 1 human trafficking job in Washington is Luis C. de Baca. The new ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons at the State Department promises trafficking will be a priority of the new administration as well - especially, of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton...

Amy Bennett Williams

www.News-Press.com

June 28, 2009


Added: June 30, 2009

Mexico

Mexican Congressional Deputy Maricela Contreras speaks out about defects in trafficking law's regulations

Denuncian colusión de bandas y funcionarios para secuestrar migrantes  

México - La presidenta de la Comisión de Equidad y Género de la Cámara de Diputados, Maricela Contreras, denunció que bandas organizadas coludidas con autoridades cometen la mayoría de los secuestros contra migrantes en las zonas fronterizas.

Señaló que según el Informe Especial sobre los casos de secuestro contra migrantes se documentaron nueve mil 758 personas privadas de su libertad, y de ese total en nueve mil 194 casos el delito fue cometido por ese tipo de organizaciones criminales...

Congress Explores Allegations of Collusion Between Criminal Gangs and Government Officials to Kidnap Migrants

According to the Special Report, 9,758 persons were deprived of their liberty

In 9,194 cases, the offense was committed by criminal organizations

The president of the Commission on Equality and Gender of the Chamber of Deputies, Maricela Contreras has reported that Mexican authorities have colluded with organized gangs to commit the majority of kidnappings targeting migrants in border regions.

Deputy Contreras noted that a special report on cases of kidnappings against migrants documented the fact that 9,758 people had been deprived of their liberty, and that in 9,194 of these cases, organized crime was the perpetrator...

The report states that migrants who enter Mexico are subjected to extortion, robbery, kidnapping, illegal searches, beatings, chases, being thrown off of moving trains, rape, threats, psychological pressure and even murder.

Contreras pointed out that the assailants most often mentioned by victims are elements of the Federal Preventive Police, military personnel and agents of the National Institute for Migration.

Data reported by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) indicates that along the southern border of Mexico, 70 per cent of migrants are victims of violence. Some 60 percent of migrants suffer some form of sexual abuse, including rape.

The CEPAL report also emphasizes that the United States border with Mexico is also a very dangerous region, where women migrants become victims of sexual violence, forced prostitution, human trafficking and murder.

Deputy Contreras denounced these human rights violations and called upon Mexican society to not tolerate inefficiencies, incompetence and  complicity by govern-ment officials, behaviors that threaten the lives and integrity of thousands of men and women who cross the borders into Mexico...

Full English Translation

El Financiero Online

With information from Notimex / JOT

June 27, 2009

See also:

Mexico

20000 Migrants a Year Kidnapped in Mexico En Route to US

Some 20,000 of the 140,000 illegal migrants en route to the United States who travel through Mexico to find work and a better life are kidnapped each year and subjected to rape, torture and murder, crimes that usually go unpunished due to the corruption of the authorities, fear of reprisals and distrust of authorities, according to Mexico’s independent National Human Rights Commission.

Mexico City – More than 1,600 migrants, above all Central Americans en route to the United States to find work, are kidnapped monthly and subjected to humiliations that usually go unpunished due to the corruption of the authorities, Mexico’s independent National Human Rights Commission reported.

“The kidnapping of migrants has become a continuous practice of worrying dimensions, generally unpunished and with characteristics of extreme cruelty,” commission chairman Jose Luis Soberanes said Monday at the presentation of the report.

Between September 2008 and February 2009, the commission registered a total of 198 separate cases of mass kidnappings of migrants involving 9,758 victims...

EFE

June 17, 2009

Sitio Oficial de Maricela Contreras Julián - Maricela Contreras' official web site (In Spanish)

Maricela Contreras Julián en la página oficial de la Cámara de Diputados - Maricela Contreras' Congressional web site - In Spanish


Added: June 28, 2009

Mexico

Mexican Congressional Deputy Maricela Contreras, chairwoman of the national commission to combat trafficking, speaks out about defects in the federal regulations published by President Calderón that weaken the nation's first federal anti-trafficking law

Atorada, ley contra tráfico de personas

Señala diputada que Segob no incluyó fiscalía en el reglamento

La Comisión de Equidad y Género de la Cámara de Diputados lamentó que a pesar de que se han detectado redes de delincuencia organizada dedicadas a la trata de personas en el país, el programa nacional de combate contra este delito no podrá operar sino hasta 2011 debido a que no se ha instalado la comisión encargada de su elaboración y no cuenta con una partida presupuestal específica...

Mexico’s Law to Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons is Stuck in the Mud

The Interior Department failed to include a role for the special prosecutor for trafficking's office in the law’s published regulations

The regulations as written will tie the hands of the anti-trafficking law’s enforcement provisions until 2011

The Commission on Equality and Gender of the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of Congress) regrets the fact that despite having identified organized crime networks involved in human trafficking in the country, the national program to combat this crime cannot begin operating until 2011. The [unexpected] delay is due to the fact that the commission responsible for standing-up these efforts does not yet have a line item in the federal budget, and therefore it has not been created.

Deputy Maricela Contreras of the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) and chairwoman of the anti-trafficking commission, noted that another failure of the Department of the Interior (SEGOB) in drafting the required federal regulations that will activate the 2008 anti-trafficking law is the fact that SEGOB did not create a role for the office of the Special Prosecutor for Crimes of Violence Against Women and Trafficking (FEVIMTRA) [an office of the Attorney General of the Republic] as one of the institutions responsible for combating trafficking...

Contreras, as part of her analysis of the official anti-trafficking regulations published on February 27, 2009 in the Official Gazette, added that the targeting of organized crime is also absent from the regulations.

"This situation is serious, because the regulations do not recognize that the problem [of trafficking] originates with various forms of criminal organizations, from disorganized bands that are just starting up to the more highly structured trafficking networks and mafias," says Contreras...

The Joint Committee of Congress has made an appeal to President Calderón’s legal counsel requesting that the Executive open the official regulations for revision [to repair the many defects within]. Presidential deputy legal counsel Javier Sanchez Arriaga responded to Congress by stating that changing the regulations was a responsibility of the Interior Department (Segob). [And thus, nothing was ever done to improve the regulations - LL]

Full English Translation

Liliana Alcántara

El Universal

June 20 2009

See also:

The Joint Committee of the Mexican Senate and Lower House has voted unanimously to ask President Calderón to revise his federal regulations governing the nation’s first anti-trafficking law.

The current regulations have no minimum standards, nor do they integrate the work of key federal agencies

Mexico City – Mexico City congressional deputy Maricela Contreras, president of the Commission on Equality and Gender of the Chamber of Deputies, has declared that a re-writing of the published Federal Regulations that enable the 2008 Law to Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons is urgently needed, given that there is an indifference and unwillingness on the part of the federal government to stop this crime wave, [of human trafficking - in defiance of the will of Congress].

...Contreras, who had called for the declaration, stated that "the published rules were delivered late [after a 9 month delay following the law’s passage, and after four warning to President Calderón from Congress -LL], they are 'plain,' and they contain omissions. The rules don’t provide any tools to combat or prevent trafficking, much less any provisions for the care of the victims, who are mostly girls and women. For these reasons, President Calderón should have the rules revised, because in their current state, they aren’t worth anything."

Full English Translation

CIMAC Noticias

May 22, 2009

See also:

¡Héroes!

Lea nuestra sección sobre la lucha de varios congresistas y defensoras de los derechos humanos para lograr obligar que el Presidente Felipe Calderón publica un reglamiento fuerte respladar a la nueva ley: Prevenir y Sancionar la Trata de Personas, de 2008, que hasta ahora es sigue siendo una ley sin fuerzas.

Read our special section about the brave work of advocates and congressional leaders in Mexico to break-through the barriers of impunity and achieve truly effective federal regulations that will enforce the original congress-ional intent of Mexico's 2008 Law to Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons.

LibertadLatina

 

Added: June 28, 2009

Mexico, Canada

Pedophile ring suspect caught in Mexico

A Canadian suspected of heading a North American pedophilia ring has been arrested in Mexico in possession of four million photographs and videos of children shown naked or striking suggestive poses.

The suspect, Arthur Lelland Sayer, "was caught red-handed at his home in Tijuana, Baja California (close to the US border) with a large number of photos and videos that were stored on over a dozen hard drives", Mexico City's public prosecutor said in a statement on Thursday.

A Mexican police investigation is ongoing to dismantle a major child pornography network and to "find evidence that it is active in the three North American countries: Mexico, the United States and Canada."

The crime ring was discovered by the "cyber police" of Mexico's Public Safety Ministry, which arrested the Canadian on Sunday along with agents from FEVIMTRA, a special unit that combats human trafficking.

Agence France-Presse (AFP)June 27, 2009


Added: June 28, 2009

Cecilia Romero, head of Mexico's national immigration service, says that sex tourism and pedophile networks are "inevitable."

"El turismo sexual es inevitable" - Cecilia Romero del Instituto Nacional de Migración de México

Photo: El Universal

LibertadLatina Commentary

President Calderón, the Human Rights Crisis at Mexico's Southern Border is Unacceptable

Our current series of articles covering the human rights emergency facing women and girl migrants at Mexico's southern border responds directly to the recent comments of Cecilia Romero, head of Mexico's national immigration service (the National Institute for Migration - INM). Director Romero stated in a press interview with El Universal, a major Mexico City daily paper, that human trafficking is "inevitable", and that, "the existence of the smuggling of migrants, human trafficking, pedophile networks, and the kidnappings and violence that affect thousands of migrants are only "evils of mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.

We strongly disagree with Director Romero and others in the leadership of Mexico's National Action Party, who habitually dismiss critical women's rights issues, including the femicide murders in Ciudad Juarez, as being the inevitable, and 'normal' results of male human behavior.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The citizens of Mexico, Mexico's Congress and the international community need to hold the government of President Felipe Calderón accountable for his allowing unending mass gender atrocities to occur on Mexico's southern border with Guatemala and Belize.

In this hell-on-earth, an estimated 450 to 600 migrant women are sexually assaulted each day, according to the International Organization for Migration. Police response is almost non-existent. At times, police are complicit in this criminal violence.

Mexico's southern border is also the largest zone on earth for the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), according to Save the Children.

As Father Luis Nieto states in the below article about Salvadoran mothers who must come to Mexico's border to grieve for their raped and murdered daughters, "We cannot keep quiet, we cannot be complicit in this."

We strongly agree with that sentiment. Silence is also violence.

The federal government of Mexico is not ignorant of this ongoing catastrophe. The United Nations, the International Organization for Migration, Save the Children, elements of the Catholic Church, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and many members of Congress have, for the last several years, demanded action to end these atrocities.

Although INM director Cecilia Romero promised in February of 2007 that she would "entirely eliminate this terrible situation," no visible action has been taken to do so as of June of 2009, 16 months after Romero made that promise.

With the current economic slowdown and the expansion of global criminal sex trafficking operations, the rapes, kidnappings and sexual  enslavement of innocent migrants on that border is increasing with no end in sight.

As the United States Congress prepares to send over $400 million dollars in largely military aid to Mexico as part of the Merida Initiative to combat the drug cartels, we insist that human rights conditions be placed on those and other U.S. foreign aid funds that are headed to Mexico.

Mexico must close down the mass rape,  kidnapping, murder and child sex trafficking gauntlet that exists with total impunity on its southern border.

We also want to see the estimated 4,000 mostly Mayan indigenous children kidnapped from this region and sold to brothels in Tokyo, and also the uncounted thousands of other indigenous child victims who have been sold to brothels in New York and Madrid rescued, repatriated and then truly cared for.

Do you need money, President Calderón, to get these things done? Or is a misogynist, 'socially conservative' ideology that is resurgent in Mexico, and that has as its strongest voice the PAN political party, the real problem here?

Esta barbarie no será perdonado por Dios!

This barbarity will not be pardoned by God!

If Mexico does not have control over this part of its own territory, or if, as appears to actually be the case, the PAN's socially conservative agenda won't allow it to defend innocent and vulnerable women and children in crisis, consistent with their apathetic reaction to the femicide murders in Ciudad Juarez, then perhaps an international force organized by the Organization of American States, or by the United Nations needs to step-up to the plate, offer to help Mexico, and take control of the situation.

This crisis in Mexico is the best example in the Americas of why a new Global Plan of Action, as proposed by Ecuadorian Minister of Justice and Human Rights (Attorney General) Néstor Arbito Chica and diplomats gathered at the United Nations on May 13, 2009, is needed to get around this impasse.

Somehow, the fact that the government of Mexico is a signatory to the Palermo Protocol, and the fact that Mexico passed its 2009 U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report evaluation with a relatively positive Level 2 Rating (as we also acknowledge State's strong critique of corruption in Mexico), misses the point.

New and out-of-the box strategies are needed to oblige Mexico to fulfill its international obligations to end this mass gender atrocity once and for all.

It is not an impossible task.

The status quo today is... unacceptable!

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

June 28, 2009


Added: June 28, 2009

Mexico

Salvadoran mothers gather to pray and leave offerings and crosses for their family members who were abused, kidnapped and murdered in the 'mugging and rape guantlet' at Mexico's southern border region known as 'La Arrocera' - the Rice Cooker.

Madres salvadoreñas depositan ofrendas en "La Arrocera"

El 80 porciento de los abusos cometidos contra los inmigrantes se cometen en esta zona de Huixtla, Chiapas

Huixtla, Chiapas - Los parientes de indocumentados fallecidos y desaparecidos visitaron "La Arrocera" , un pequeño tramo de escasos cuatro kilómetros que los indocumentados utilizan para evadir la caseta migratoria El hueyate, en Huixtla...

Salvadoran mothers leave offerings for their murdered children at "The Rice Cooker"

80 percent of abuses against migrants occur in this area near the city of Huixtla, Chiapas

Huixtla, Chiapas - relatives of deceased and missing undocumented migrants visited "La Arrocera," a four kilometer long rural trail that north-bound Central and South American migrants use to bypass the Hueyate immigration station in the city of Huixtla, Chiapas.

Under strict security arrangements and with the support of Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH), members of the Committee of Families of Deceased and Missing Migrants toured the area of "the Rice Cooker" near Huixtla, a municipality in the state of Chiapas, where dozens of men and women have been assaulted, raped and murdered.

"The Rice Cooker" is a [rural] migrant trail where 80 percent of the assaults and homicides in the region are committed, according to testimony gathered by the Catholic Church and human rights organizations.

Even police will not enter this zone unless they have several officers armed with high-powered weapons.

Father Luis Angel Nieto prayed for eternal rest for all of those migrants who lost their lives here in their attempt to reach "the American Dream."

For the second time during the trip, Father Luis Nieto demanded that the Mexican authorities combat these crimes, that for several years have sewn pain and fear.

"We cannot keep quiet, we cannot be complicit in this," he said.

After prayer, the Salvadorans planted dozens of crosses in memory of those who lost their lives here and who were never identified.

During the emotional ceremony, the mothers and fathers could not contain their tears. The sadness and pain invaded their faces. Most knew the true meaning of "the Rice Cooker".

Juan de Dios Garcia Davish

Feb. 11, 2009

See also:

“Wall of Violence” on Mexico’s Southern Border

Calderon’s “two-faced” policy combines police, the military, gangs, and Los Zetas [ex-military, who are now 'hit men' for the drug cartels] to fulfill US mandate to deter Central American migration

...Wall of Violence

“Migrants don’t have rights in Mexico,” says Father Heyman Vazquez Medina, founder of El Hogar de la Misericordia. “It’s ok to beat them, extort money from them, rob them, sexually abuse them, murder them, and nothing happens.

Central American migrants’ legal security guarantees appear to be repeatedly and permanently violated by individuals and groups of people who rely on the protection, consent, tolerance, or acquiescence of the State and who have the power of weapons, money, police protection, corruption, and impunity. They have put a price on the head of each migrant.”

Migrant shelter staffers say those who abuse migrants operate with absolute impunity... [Father Alejandro Solalinde Guerra, the southern coordinator of the Catholic Church’s Human Mobility Mission Migrants program] recalls one case where a woman was kidnapped from one of the shelters he oversees. Solalinde remained in contact with her family throughout the ordeal. When she finally turned up in the United States, she said that the group that kidnapped her forced her to make several [pornographic movies]. When they finally brought her to the US-Mexico border, they made her family pay thousands of dollars in ransom. Solalinde offered to fly her back south and pay all of her expenses if she filed a complaint with the government. The woman refused, saying she never wanted to set foot in Mexico ever again.

Even when migrants or human rights organizations do file complaints, they almost never result in arrests or convictions. Solalinde says that almost every time he calls the police because migrants have identified and located their attackers, he can’t find a police force that will arrest the suspects. They all say they don’t have jurisdiction in immigration affairs...

 ...[Mercedes Osuna of La Semilla del Sur, a Chiapas-based organization that works primarily on indigenous issues] explains that [after crossing into Mexico, to avoid a migration station on the highway north], undocumented migrants must walk a roundabout route through an area called la Arrocera. La Arrocera is teeming with violent criminals who mug [and rape and kidnap] migrants as they pass through. Osuna spoke with some migrants who recently passed through la Arrocera. They told her that in la Arrocera they saw uniformed Chiapas state police in marked vehicles pick up and drop off people who mugged migrants. In la Arrocera, the muggers are painfully thorough: migrants complained to Osuna of being stripped searched. The assailants even checked their victims’ anuses and vaginas for hidden valuables.

Police don’t just offer rides to assailants; they often are the assailants...

**

The “Wall of Violence” is fierce: El Hogar de la Misericordia [a migrant shelter] estimates that 80% of all migrants who pass through Chiapas state have been assaulted during their travels. Approximately 30% of the women who come to El Hogar de la Misericordia report being sexually assaulted in la Arrocera, Chiapas, which is only one of many stops along the migrants’ route. Fermina Rodriguez of the Fray [Friar] Matias de Cordova Human Rights Center, which monitors human rights on Mexico’s southern border, says, “When you talk to women, they consider rape to be part of the price they pay to migrate.” ...

Kristen Bricker

My Word is My Weapon

Dec. 24, 2008


Added: June 27, 2009

Panama

A 'Genteleman's Club' in Panama

Photo: Panama Star

The Sexual Reality of the Country

Panama is not only seen as a tax haven, but also a sexual paradise for tourists where everything is available for the right price

Every country has a seedy side and Panama is no exception. Like many other places in the world the sex industry is thriving and attracting visitors.

For many tourists that is one of Panama’s attractions. The so called “gentlemen’s clubs” offer not only beautiful women willing to do anything for the right price, but also the promise of forbidden pleasures.

Technically speaking sexual tourism is a crime, however there are Internet sites where the would be traveler will not only have all the their traveling arrangement taken care of, but also they throw into the package a lovely companion of whatever sex and age depending on the client’s preference...

Prostitution is a big business and organized crime gangs regularly bring women from Colombia, the Dominican Republic and other countries to work in the sex industry.

They bring the girls under false pretences promising them work. In reality the human traffickers take away their passports and use them as prostitutes in nightclubs and bars.

They are scared and lonely, in a foreign country, with nowhere to run to. They are terrified of the human traders and too afraid to go to the police because they know they are going to be deported...

Perhaps the worst part of the sex industry is the commercial sexual exploitation of children through on-line pornography and actual prostitution.

The Public Ministry is currently investigating 40 cases involving commercial sexual exploitation of children and pornography...

Marijulia Pujol Lloyd

Panama Star

06-04-2009


Added: June 27, 2009

Mexico

Senators José Luis Máximo García Zalvidea (left) and Rubén Velázquez,

Senators Lázaro Mazón (left) and Francisco Javier Castellón Fonseca

PRD pide a INM explicación por red de lenocinio

Legisladores del PRD pidieron la comparecencia de Cecilia Romero Castillo, comisionada del Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM), por el caso de mujeres sin papeles de Centroamérica prostituidas...    

Legislators call upon the Joint Committee of Congress to call immigration (INM) director Cecilia Romero in to appear and explain apparent involvement of INM agents in Yucatán sex trafficking network

Congressional lawmakers from the Party of the Democratic Revolution [one of Mexico’s three main political parties] have called for Cecilia Romero Castillo, commissioner of the National Institute for Migration (INM) to appear before Congress to explain the situation of a case in which undocumented Central American women where prostituted in [the state of Yucatán, with the alleged involvement of immigration agents in criminal activity].

Senators José Luis Máximo García Zalvidea, Rubén Velázquez, Lázaro Mazón and Francisco Javier Castellón Fonseca presented an accord before the Standing [joint] Committee of Congress to "invite" to the commissioner of the INM to a meeting with legislative members of the First Committee.

PRD legislators want Romero to report on the performance of INM immigration officers in the areas of human rights, and especially in the state of Yucatán, “where a network dedicated to trafficking in persons and sexual exploitation of women" [involving INM officers] has been discovered.

The PRD congressional members have also asked the Standing Committee of Congress to request that the Attorney General’s Special Prosecutor for Crimes of Violence Against Women and Trafficking in Persons (FEVIMTRA) investigate and take action against agents in the INM’s Yucatán office for their involvement in human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

The Standing Committee was also asked to request from the National Commission on Human Rights that it open an investigation into the case, and assist the foreign national victims who have filed criminal complaints in the case.

Jorge Ramos and Ricardo Gomez

El Universal

Mexico City

June 17 2009


Added: June 27, 2009

Colombia

The 11 month police operation was code named for this well known Colombian novel

Así operaba la red de trata de personas más poderosa del país, desmantelada por la Policía  

Un grupo de 20 investigadores de la Policía de Infancia y Adolescencia de Medellín adelantó toda la investigación, que se inició en julio del año pasado. Una joven de 18 años denunció su caso. 

"Una amiga me dijo que le estaban ofreciendo un trabajo en Bogotá y que nos iban a pagar 300 o 400 mil pesos. Cuando nos presentamos nos subieron a un bus, pero para el Urabá. Luego nos recogieron en un taxi, nos quitaron los papeles y nos llevaron a una casa de citas. Allá un señor nos dijo que ya sabíamos a qué íbamos, hasta que la ley nos encontró como a los cinco días"...

Police dismantle the largest sex trafficking network discovered to date in Colombia

A group of 20 police investigators from the Children and Adolescents unit in the city of Medellin developed the entire investigation, which began in July of 2008. An 18-year-old youth originally reported to network to authorities.

"A friend told me that she had been offered a job in [the capital city of] Bogotá that would pay 300 to 400 pesos [between $140 and $185 US dollars]. When we reported for work we were told to board a bus, but it was bound for the city of Urabá. Then our employers picked us up in a taxi, they took our identification and took us to a brothel. There, a man told us that we knew what we were going to have to do. We were rescued by the police 5 days later.” ...

The authorities arrested 69 people, including 17 women. Police remain on the trail of another 28 suspects.

There were so many similar complaints from victims that investigators had concluded that they were not dealing with two or three people who induced women into prostitution, but a powerful network. One that trafficked women from Medellin not only to other cities in Antioquia department [state], but also to the capital, Bogota , and to Cucuta, Cartagena, Santa Marta and towns in the Magdalena Medio [the eastern-most region of Antioquia]. There are also indications that the network had contacts abroad to traffic women to Aruba and Venezuela...

"Send me another one like her and we will call the account even"

Police intercepted communications between members of the network. They were able to establish that eight people, which they called ‘The Commission,’ sold women for amounts ranging from 30,000 to a million Colombian pesos [between $14 and $467 US dollars].

One intercepted communicated from a customer of the network [a brothel owner] to a member of the ‘Commission stated: "You sent me a woman for 30,000 pesos, but she was very ugly. Send me another one like her and we’ll call the account even.” ...

After the operation, code named 'Candida Eréndida' [Innocent Eréndira, a novel by famed Colombian Nobel Literature Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez], police distributed leaflets in the city of Medellin to warn the public not to be taken in by these networks.

Police continue to investigate the network’s links abroad.

Full English Translation

www.eltiempo.com

June 26, 2009


Added: June 26, 2009

Mexico, Guatemala

Photo: CIMAC Noticias

Niñez y prostitución en la frontera sur, el costo de llegar a EU

Leticia, una vida entre ebrios, maras y policías

Segunda y última parte

Suchiate, Chiapas. - Leticia, como miles de púberes y jóvenes en el submundo de la explotación sexual infantil en México, sobrevive entre ebrios, en esta zona de 700 kilómetros de frontera con Guatemala y Belice.

Tenía 12 años cuando llegó sola a Chiapas por primera vez, con la ilusión de continuar viaje y cruzar la frontera estadounidense en busca de un mejor futuro. Ahora, en su sexto intento, trabaja en una cantina de la zona. Apenas ha cumplido 14 años de edad...

The Cost of Reaching the U.S.; Children and Prostitution at Mexico’s Southern Border

Leticia at age 14: a life drinking, gangs and police

Second and last part

Suchiate, Chiapas state - Leticia, like many pre-teen and teenage youth living in the underworld of child sexual exploitation in Mexico, survives between bouts of heavy drinking here along Mexico’s 700 kilometer border with Guatemala and Belize.

Leticia was 12-years-old when she came alone to Chiapas for the first time, with the illusion of being able to reach and then cross the U.S. border in search of a better future. Now, after her sixth attempt, she works in a cantina (bar) in the area. She has just turned 14...

Unlike many of her fellow teen prostitutes, Leticia did not have to sell her virginity, a ‘service’ that customers are charged between $2,000 and $3,500 for. "I wanted to marry my boyfriend, but he abandoned me when he learned that I was pregnant. I had an abortion at two months out of disappointment," said Leticia, expressing with her child’s eyes a false maturity that shows even more her clearly her helpless...

Leticia says that many customers not only want to have sex, but they also want to photograph her or record her on videotape or on cell phones in exchange for an additional amount of money...

...The Chiapas State’s Attorney has, during 2009, dismantled three gangs dedicated to the sexual exploitation of minors in the cities of Tapachula, Tuxtla Gutierrez and Rayón. At least 14 detainees facing charges for procuring, criminal association and assault, among other charges.

The children and underage youth freed from these gangs had been forced to work in sexual slavery for more than 12 hours each day. They had to bring their enslavers $2,000 during that period. In exchange, they were given one plate of rice and beans to eat. These facts are just the tip of an ominous iceberg...

Full English Translation

Manuel de la Cruz

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico City

June 25, 2009

LibertadLatina Commentary

We at LibertadLatina once again applaud the detailed, consistent and high quality reporting that CIMAC Noticias in Mexico has provided on the critical issues affecting women and girls in Mexico and across Latin America.

The global humanitarian organization Save the Children has identified Mexico's southern border with Guatemala and Belize as being the largest zone for the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) in the entire world. We have long recognized this fact, and accurate reporting in the Spanish language press, from CIMAC and also mainstream Mexican newspapers has provided a window into this nightmare.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) office in Tapachula, Chiapas has estimated that between 450 to 600 women and girl migrants who cross the border into southern Mexico are raped each and every day, with little or no law enforcement reaction in response.

In Tapachula, a prostitution 'mega-center' in Chiapas state, over 50% of the 20,000 females working in prostitution are underage girls and youth who have been forced by others or by economic necessity to accept a life of sexual exploitation. Some 50% of them are from the Mayan majority nation of Guatemala.

Chiapas, being a state located on this lawless border, is the only government entity in the world that is not actually a  nation to have established a direct relationship with the United Nations to address human trafficking. This region's crisis is indeed an emergency that requires the focused attention from the world community.

President Felipe Calderón of Mexico has been less than enthusiastic about fighting human trafficking, given his year-long effort to foot drag on efforts to publish effective regulations to enable the nation's first anti-trafficking law.

Now, Cecilia Romero, head of Mexico's immigration service (the National Institute for Migration - INM), has stated that human trafficking is "inevitable", and added that, "the existence of the smuggling of migrants, human trafficking, pedophile networks, and the kidnappings and violence that affect thousands of migrants are only "evils of mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.

Women and children's rights and immigrant rights groups in Mexico have been under-standably outraged by these comments. We join with them in denouncing such a hands-off and dismissive approach to confronting the mass gender atrocity of sexual exploitation and violence with impunity that is now taking place across Mexico.

We remain especially concerned that Cecilia Romero,  a former congressional deputy, senator and a long-time activist and official in the National Action Party (PAN) since 1982, is, through her statements about the 'inevitability' of sex trafficking, effectively justifying such criminal sexual exploitation and the lack of a Mexican federal response to that illegal enterprise. This policy position is consistent with many other statements and actions from the socially conservative PAN, that actively seek to diminish the independence and basic individual human rights of women.

It thus remains the responsibility of the international community to address these issues in collaboration, and in solidarity with the many elements of Mexican society who desire to be liberated from this Taliban-like mass movement to repress the basic humanity of women and girls.

Members of Congress, and activists in organizations such as the Teresa Ulloa's Mexico City based Latin America and Caribbean branch of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, as well as brave reporters like Lydia Cacho (who has been unjustly jailed and still faces death threats for her activism), and news agencies such as CIMAC Noticias (who's offices have been ransacked in the past for their reporting on sexual exploitation), all deserve the support of the international community, and they deserve our help.

We especially laud Teresa Ulloa and CIMAC Noticias for standing up to denounce the exploitation of indigenous women and girls, who are the primary target of many traffickers and rapists.

Let's give the advocates for women and girl's human rights in Mexico the help that they need now, while there is still time to avert an even more well organized war against women and girls than the one that is happening today!

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

June 26/27, 2009

See also:

Mexico vows to improve migrant's treatment

Mexico City - Mexico's head of migration [Cecilia Romero Castillo] on Tuesday pledged to improve the agency's detention centers in response to criticism that Mexico fails to give Central American immigrants the same respect it demands for its own citizens in the United States....

The Mexican government has acknowledged that many officials are bribed by human smugglers. Migrants face abuse from corrupt police as well as
violent gangs who wait on the southern border to rob and assault them.

The government-funded National Human Rights Commission, U.N. human rights officials and other non-governmental organiza-tions say they have documented abuses.

The migration depart-ment's plan aims "to entirely eliminate this terrible situation," Romero told a news conference. [Yet as of June, 2009 they have failed to act on this promise - LL.]

Answering U.S. concerns, President Felipe Calderon also has promised to strengthen security on Mexico's southern border to stop the tide of illegal migrants - the majority of whom use Mexico as a way station to the United States...

In January [2007], Mexico detained more than 10,000 illegal migrants, and
expects that number to increase to 205,000 by the end of [2007],
according to a report by the migration department....

Lisa J. Adams

The Associated Press

Feb. 28, 2007


Added: June 25, 2009

Mexico, Guatemala

Photo: CIMAC Noticias

Leticia, de 14 años, sobrevive en la explotación sexual

24 mil niñas y niños prostituidos u obligados a la pornografía

Primera de dos partes

Suchiate, Chiapas - Leticia es una niña centroamericana de 14 años, sin documentos, a quien prostituyen en una cantina de este municipio fronterizo con Guatemala.

Han pasado casi dos años desde que dejó su país natal para migrar rumbo a Estados Unidos. A pesar de las duras condiciones en que vive para lograr su objetivo, no deja de intentarlo. Sabe que la deportación es casi segura, según sus propias palabras, pero ni eso la detiene en su idea de cruzar la frontera, alternativa que encontró ante la miseria y el incierto futuro en su lugar de origen... 

Leticia, Age 14, Survives in Sexual Exploitation

24,000 boys and girls forced into prostitution or pornography across Mexico

First of two parts

Suchiate, Chiapas state – Leticia is a 14-year-old undocumented Central American girl who is being prostituted in a Cantina (bar) in this town on the Guatemalan border.

It has been almost two years since Leticia left her native country to migrate to the United States. Despite the harsh conditions she has had to live through in order to achieve that goal, she will not give up. She knows that her deportation from Mexico is almost certain, as she herself says. But she will not be detained in her effort to reach the U.S. border, seeking to find an alternative to the misery and uncertain future that she faced in her homeland.

Leticia’s situation is no different than that of  hundreds of children who have been trapped by this border region’s commercial sex networks, who have offered their victims “a way to make fast money.”

They are victims of exploitation of the international networks of traffickers who grab them either before or after they cross the border at the Suchiate River or along clandestine smuggling paths that exist all along the border with Guatemala. Advocacy organizations who fight on their behalf refer to them as “sex slaves...”

The director of the Movimiento Ciudadano de la Frontera Sur (Southern Frontier Citizen’s Movement), Juan José González, notes that the phenomenon of prostitution in the region has increased alarmingly. These are not isolated cases, he says.

On the streets, and in bars, clubs, schools and outside of shopping centers in cities such as Suchiate, Tapachula, Cacahoatán, Tuxtla Chico and Huixtla, it is common to find women [and girls] of different ages engaged in prostitution...

For now, while Leticia continues to be a victim of sexual exploitation, the director of Mexico’s National Institute for Migration (INM), Cecilia Romero, has recently told the newspaper El Universal that the existence of smuggling of migrants, human trafficking, pedophile networks, and the kidnappings and violence that affect thousands of migrants are only "evils of mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.

Full English Translation

Manuel de la Cruz

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico City

June 24, 2009


Added: June 24, 2009

The United States, Mexico

Joaquín Aguilar Méndez, right, a former altar boy, has sued the Rev. Nicolás Aguilar, shown in photo at left. (From a web site that takes an opposing position in the case of Nicolás Aguilar - in Spanish).

Arquidiócesis de Puebla y Los Ángeles toleran pederastia

México DF.- Integrantes de la Red de Sobrevivientes de Abusos por Sacerdotes (SNAP, por sus siglas en inglés) interpusieron una demanda contra las arquidiócesis de Los Ángeles, California, y de Tehuacán, Puebla, querella que involucra a los cardenales Roger Mahony y Norberto Rivera, respectivamente, informa la Agencia NotieSe.

El ciudadano, identificado como Juan Doe (“Juan Nadie”), abusado sexualmente en 1988 por el sacerdote mexicano Nicolás Aguilar, acusa a esas instancias eclesiales y al Departamento de Educación de California de negligencia en la protección a su persona, puesto que Aguilar trabajó como profesor después de ser transferido de Tehuacán a Los Ángeles por el entonces obispo local, Norberto Rivera...

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico City

June 23, 2009

Charges of cross-border church abuses continue

Mexico City - A victims’ group said Thursday that it was filing a new lawsuit in Los Angeles, California, against Mexican and U.S. church officials accused of sheltering a suspected pedophile priest.

The lawsuit accuses Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera of conspiring with Roman Catholic officials in the United States to shelter Nicolas Aguilar, a Mexican priest wanted in California for 19 felony counts of committing lewd acts on a child.

This is the third lawsuit filed by the group, Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, against the Catholic Church for allegedly protecting Aguilar. Two previous lawsuits filed in Los Angeles against the Mexican cardinal by Mexican citizens were dismissed in 2007.

This time, however, the unnamed plaintiff is a U.S. citizen.

“In this case it was a North American boy molested in North American territory,” said Jose Bonilla, a lawyer for SNAP.

Bonilla said he was “practically 100 percent sure” that the plaintiff, identified only as John Doe, would have his day in court. “But it’s going to be a long process,” he said.

In addition to Cardinal Rivera, the lawsuit charges the archdiocese of Tehuacan in the Mexican state of Puebla, where Rivera worked at the time, the archdiocese of Los Angeles and the California Department of Education with failing to protect the plaintiff from Rev. Aguilar.

Foreign Correspondency

June 18, 2009


Added: June 24, 2009

Colombia

Stella Cardenas, director of Fundacion Renacer (the Rebirth Foundation)

Insuficientes, Nuevas Sanciones Sobre Turismo Sexual Y Pornografía Infantil En Colombia

Bogotá.- La muerte de Yesid Torres, de apenas 15 años, conmovió a los habitantes de Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, donde la explotación sexual va en aumento. El menor de edad falleció a consecuencia de una sobredosis de cocaína que consumió en el apartamento del italiano Paolo Pravisani, pederasta de 72 años,  quien lo había contratado para proveerle servicios sexuales, informó la agencia Semlac…

New Sanctions on Child Pornography and Sexual Tourism in Colombia are Insufficient

Bogota .- The death of Yesid Torres, a boy who had just turned 15, shocked the people of the city of Cartagena de Indias, where sexual exploitation is increasing. The youth died from an overdose of cocaine consumed in the apartment of Italian Paolo Pravisani, a 72 year old pedophile who had contracted Torres to provide sexual services.

In response to increasing levels of sexual exploitation, Colombian lawmakers passed a law on June 10, 2009 that applies new penalties, including a 20 year prison term for those who engage in producing child pornography. The law also makes child sex tourism a crime.

The legislation provides for prison sentences of 4 to 8 years for persons who promote child sex tourism, without the possibility of parole. The length of the sentence may be increased by half when the victim is under 12 years of age.

Stella Cardenas, director of Fundacion Renacer (the Rebirth Foundation), notes that although the penalty for promoting child sex tourism under the new law is higher than the 3 year sentence available under the old law, the length of sentence is still too low. She adds that the law fails to address cases of aggressors who sexually exploit youth between the ages of 14 and 18 who have consented to engage in [commercial] sex, often due to economic hardship.

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico city

June 23, 2009

Véase también:

Luz Stella Cardenas

Luz Stella es la directora y fundadora de la Fundación Renacer, una organización que trabaja con niños y niñas víctimas de explotación sexual y ha atendido a lo largo de su historia a más de quince mil niños de Bogotá, Cartagena y Barranquilla. Desde 1988, su propósito fundamental ha sido combatir la explotación sexual infantil y acompañar a las personas explotadas sexualmente en su recuperación y realización personal...

Somos Más

Feb. 08, 2006

See also:

About Stella Cárdenas

Stella Cárdenas is building new institutional protections against child prostitution and pornography in Colombia by persuading the government to extend the mandate of its ministry charged with protection of children, the Ministry of Family Welfare... Stella and her Fundación Renacer ("Rebirth Foundation") contributed substantially to the passage of Law 360. This law, passed in 1997, for the first time assigned penalties–fines or jail sentences–for anyone who draws children into prostitution...

Ashoka International

2001


Added: June 23, 2009

Mexico

Mexico's immigration commissioner Cecilia Romero

El turismo sexual es inevitable: INM

Para la comisionada del Instituto Nacional de Migración, Cecilia Romero, el turismo sexual, tráfico de personas, comercio de mujeres, redes de pederastia, plagio y violencia contra miles de migrantes son “males de la humanidad” que México no puede erradicar...

Mexico’s Immigration Chief: Sex Tourism is Inevitable

According to Cecilia Romero, the commissioner of Mexico’s National Migration Institute (immigration service), sex tourism, human trafficking, female commercial sex work, pedophile networks, and the kidnappings and violence that victimize thousands of migrants [crossing Mexico to get to the U.S.] are "evils of mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.

Even if such practices have triggered: 1) harsh reports [about Mexico] from the U.S. Department of State and Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH); 2) complaints by foreign victims about their forced prostitution and sex trafficking; and 3) complaints from  [undocumented] Cuban migrants who have been extorted for thousands of dollars in their quest to get to Florida, Romero concludes that all of these problems have existed since the origins of migration...

[Commenting on strong criticism of the INM and repeated calls for her resignation,] Romero argues that the National Migration Institute has implemented a 'purification' effort which has caused a number of problems to emerge into the public spotlight.

The immigration director noted that since her team arrived as part of President Felipe Calderón’s government, she has accomplished much, but she is also aware that those achievements will never be enough [to solve the problems that exist].

Romero said that the vast majority of complaints that have been submitted [about official corruption] originate from within the INM itself. So far about 300 immigration officers have been reprimanded or removed. "This shows that we are making progress, although I will never be satisfied in our war against organized crime."

Romero adds that when there is discussion about immigrants, the finger is always pointed at the INM. But, she says, the criminal networks have state police, corrections officers and also immigration agents on their payrolls. We are investigating and pursuing them. Romero insists that her agency is taking action to get to the bottom of the problem of corruption.

Jose Gerardo Mejia

El Universal

June 20 2009

LibertadLatina Commentary

We appreciate the fact that Cecilia Romero, the commissioner of Mexico’s National Migration Institute, is a rare federal agency director who is willing to be honest in expressing the Felipe Calderón Administration's lack of interest in treating the mass gender atrocity of adult and child sexual exploitation in that nation as a serious crisis requiring an urgent response.

According to the traditional beliefs of Roman feudalism that still prevail in Mexico, such behavior is, as Director Romero says, simply "inevitable."

The hidden follow-on to that statement is: "If it is inevitable, why do anything to fight it?"

So a nation like Mexico ends up doing only the minimum necessary to placate the U.S. State Department's Trafficking in Persons Office with the objective of receiving a reasonably good rating in the annual TIP report.

In other words, Romero is saying: Victims, don't hold your breath as you wait for help. That help is not forthcoming from President Calderón's federal government.

That is not a good enough answer!

Commissioner Romero's statement is consistent with the lack of action that the Mexican public sees from its federal government in regard to addressing modern human slavery and other forms of violence against women.

We are especially concerned that this policy position, stating that mass sexual violence and slavery is inevitable, is consistent with other positions taken on women's human rights issues by President Calderón's National Action Party (PAN), such as stating that the women who have been kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered by the hundreds in Ciudad Juarez caused their own deaths because they wore immodest clothing and walked in bad parts of town.

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

June 23/24, 2009

See also:

LibertadLatina

Analysis of the political actions and policies of Mexico's National Action Party (PAN) in regard to their detrimental impact on women's basic human rights


Added: June 23, 2009

Colombia

El turismo sexual aumenta cada día más en el país  

Bogotá - Las cifras sobre turismo sexual en Colombia son alarmantes. Vender el cuerpo a clientes que llegan de todas partes del mundo, se ha convertido en uno de los mejores negocios en el país, siendo Cali una de las primeras ciudades en la lista...

Sex tourism is increasing on a daily basis

Bogota - The figures on sexual tourism in Colombia are alarming. To sell your body to customers who arrive from all over the world has become one of the best businesses in the nation, with Cali being the city at the top of the list.

According to a report of the Rebirth Foundation (Foundation Renacer), in the past two years the phenomenon has grown 53% in Cali, the capital of Valle del Cauca department [state]. Minors form the majority of those involved in the business.

The most appealing magnets for foreign tourists who come to our nation are the bodies of girls between 12 and 14 years [who are sold to them in prostitution]. This business generates huge profits for the mafia. Although 202 cases have been documented during the past 24 months, these incidents have been reported neither to the police for minors nor to the SIJIN (the Judicial Investigations and Intelligence Service). 

elpaisvallenato.com

June 21, 2009

LibertadLatina Commentary

Colombia may indeed be a leader in efforts to combat modern human trafficking. In the U.S. State Department's 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, Colombia received a 'Tier 1' rating, the highest possible, to reward their efforts against human trafficking.

Yet Colombia's government and certain social elements contribute to a large number of human rights abuses, especially those that victimize Afro-Colombians in Indigenous peoples, who face wanton murder, rape and displacement by the military and right wing paramilitary forces hell bent on stealing their land and conducting their own perverted version of 'social cleansing.' Leftist guerillas are not innocent either.

These abuses, including the forced conscription of underage girls and accompanying sexual abuse perpetrated by illegal armed groups on both sides of the conflict contribute to an environment where mass human trafficking is made possible.

With an estimated 70,000 victims of human trafficking being created annually, Colombia is right up there with Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Argentina as one of the major nations involved in the illegal trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation.

We recommend that an index of trafficking behavior in these nations that is separate from the annual TIP report be developed to assess the true story 'on the ground' in the nations of the Americas. Currently, the TIP rating system does not reflect the true intensity of the problem.

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

June 23, 2009


Added: June 21, 2009

Colombia - The United States

María is keeping her identity hidden, for fear of reprisals.

Photo: Helda Martínez/IPS

Trafficking Victims’ Ordeal Never Over

Bogota - A mixture of rage, impotence and terror is evident behind the sadness in María’s eyes. It’s been five months since she escaped from her captors in the United States, where she was taken under a false job contract, and she still can’t shake off her fear…

According to the available data, some 70,000 people fall victim to human trafficking every year in Colombia, which ranks third in the number of victims in Latin America, behind the Dominican Republic and Brazil.

…Statistics only partially reflect the magnitude of the crime, because many of the victims refuse to go to the police for fear traffickers will carry out their threats, or that they will be shunned by their community, or simply because they don’t realize just how severely their rights have been violated…

…People do fall for the bogus offers because they are in dire need of an opportunity for a better life. That was what happened to María, a 40-year old woman originally from the central province of Tolima, who was living on the outskirts of Bogotá when she was captured by members of a trafficking mafia.

She admitted to IPS that she’s still scared her captors will find her or come after her kids…

She’s also filled with rage. In November 2008 she and her family carefully examined the work contract before she decided to accept a job as a domestic in the home of a wealthy Colombian family in the United States…

But everything changed when she arrived at her destination somewhere in the U.S. … They took away her passport and other documents, then forced her to work all day long, from 5 a.m. through midnight, with only half a day’s rest on Sundays, and drastically reduced her meals, feeding her a meager vegetable diet…

[A] woman from El Salvador told María that what her "employers" were doing was illegal, explained how to unblock the telephone, and gave her an emergency number to phone the police for help.

But the police merely forced her captors to give back her passport and admonished them for how they were treating her.

That night, María’s kidnappers scared her with all sorts of threats against her and her family back in Colombia. They warned her that if she didn’t sign a paper exonerating them from all responsibility, they would report her to the police and accuse her of several offences, and she would be thrown in jail for years.

She was finally able to sneak out of the house while her kidnappers thought she was sleeping, and was driven to a shelter for human trafficking victims by the Salvadoran woman and her husband.

"There I started to get better. I spoke several times with my children and the rest of my family, and I came to realize that there are many people in the same difficult situation as me. Two other Colombian women were there with me, and another four had left the day I arrived," she said…

Inter press Service (IPS)

June 10, 2009

LibertadLatina Commentary

Ten years ago a Colombian woman caught in an almost identical situation of domestic labor slavery approached a hair dresser, asking for help to escape her employer - a wealthy Colombian diplomatic family living in the Washington, DC region. I made good her escape, and that of a friend who worked for another diplomatic family from Colombia.

The victim's employer yelled and screamed at her, made her work under constant verbal threats from 6 am until midnight, forced her to cook, clean, mow the lawn and shovel the snow for a family of five living in a big house on a large piece of land, and forbade her to leave the house alone. Only during one of her 'supervised' visits to a local hair salon was she able to contact a sympathetic person willing to help. That person contacted me.

This woman still lives in fear of her employer, but has gotten married and has brought her daughter to the U.S.

Many middle and upper class women across Latin America employ domestic workers. A very large number of these employers act in a fashion that reflects extreme cruelty, and is consistent with the manner in which wealthy women in the Roman Empire treated enslaved women in their homes.

We see the results of this attitude in the Roman Empire through the example of the poorly fed and frail servant girls, barely given enough food to survive, whose well-preserved bodies have been found in the ruins of the houses of wealthy Romans who lived in the city of Pompeii.

Many wealthy and middle class women continue to treat their 'hired help' in the same slave-like fashion in one offshoot of the Roman Empire known as modern Latin America. You just have to watch a Mexican soap opera on a Spanish language TV network anywhere in the world to confirm that ugly fact.

As a millionaire Greek business owner once explained to me, the fact that Mediterranean cultures enslaved each other 'back and forth' for millennia lead directly to the fact that there is no remorse for slavery in Latin America. He told me that when he arrived in the U.S. years ago, his biggest surprise was that white Americans felt remorse for the past enslavement of African Americans.

That remorse does not exist in the Mediter-ranean region. By extension (and Spain is one of these Mediter-ranean cultures), remorse for slavery does no exist among the elites in Latin America.

So how can the world depend upon the judgment, and trust the actions of such elites to pass anti-trafficking laws and enforce them, when tolerance for labor and sexual exploitation was and is built into the very foundation of Latin American societies?

This is why a new Global Plan of Action against slavery, proposed by a number of United Nations member countries, is needed, because... given the existence of the U.S. State Department's Trafficking in Persons report or not, international legal instruments, and the threat of U.S. economic sanctions will not break through the Roman wall of impunity that enslaves Latin America's oppressed populations, and especially the poor, the indigenous and the African descendent, without engaging in out of the box thinking and action to end this crisis.

In other words, the modern anti-trafficking movement, and the actions of many international and U.S. bodies assume that all nations want to collaborate to end sex and labor  trafficking. That sentiment is true among some sectors of society in Latin America. But powerful economic and political forces thrive through the exploitation of the victims of modern human slavery, while ancient cultural and religious traditions justify such inhumanity.

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission recently announced that some 1,600 mostly Central American migrants traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S., mostly women and girls, are kidnapped each month into slavery. It is known that sexual slavery predominates in Mexico much more so than labor slavery. In the case of domestic servitude, involving tens of thousands of underage Indigenous girls in Mexico, sex and labor slavery, co-exist).

This is happening to the benefit of the elites and paid-off corrupt officials in Mexico, while at the same time the publication of serious federal regulations that are urgently required to enact the nation's first anti-trafficking law was intentionally delayed by President Felipe Calderón for 11 months. When the rules were finally published, after four stern warnings from Congress, they were watered down to make the law ineffective.

Many members of Mexico's Congress of the Republic have admonished President Calderón for not caring about the plight of trafficking victims.  Together with non-governmental organizations, these legislators have organized an effort to insist that President Calderón withdraw his current anti-trafficking regulations and allow them to be re-written to put the teeth back in them to reflect the original intent of Congress in passing the law. It is obvious that President Calderón finally published the regulations so that Mexico would receive a positive rating (Tier 2) in the 2009 U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report.

Meanwhile, 20,000 migrants, mostly women and children, are kidnapped into slavery in Mexico each year while corrupt and apathetic law enforce-ment and government officials not only don't lift a finger to help these victims, but, as the 2009 TIP report acknowledges, they are sometimes direct participants in these kidnappings.

In addition, 4,000 Indigenous Mexican children remain enslaved in prostitution in Japan, while neither Mexico nor Japan do anything to find and rescue them.

Eight year old Mexican girls have been reported as being trafficking "into the brothels of the basements of New York" both currently and since at least the mid 1990s, if not earlier.

Yet these realities are not reflected in the 2009 U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, which was also true under the administration of former President George W. Bush.

The overall TIP report assessment of Mexico is accurate, but the nuances, detailing the intentional resistance by the Calderón administration against actually caring about and acting to defend trafficking victims and those at risk, is not reflected in the report.

The misogynist policies of the far right members of Calderón's National Action Party (PAN) are also not reflected in the 2009 TIP report. It is not in their best interest to clamp-down on modern human slavery, a position reflected in their efforts to foot-drag on building effective anti-trafficking efforts at the federal level.

Truth be told, Mexico's economy would be seriously 'harmed' if all forms of labor and sexual slavery ended. That does not justify extending the life of such exploitation for even one second.

We applaud Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Trafficking in Persons Office Director Louis C. De Baca, the first Latino head of the office, for the release of an expanded and well thought out Trafficking in Persons report, the first delivered by a Democratic administration.

But the case of Mexico, as well as the case of the major criminal enterprise that is the trafficking of mostly Afro-Latina women from the Dominican Republic to Argentina (while anti-trafficking analysis largely ignores this issue) are two areas that greatly concern us.

We look forward to seeing serious emphasis placed on addressing sex and labor trafficking in Latina America, especially where indigenous and African descendent populations are targeted, because in both types of slavery, these peoples comprise a very large segment of those who are at risk.

If this basic task of putting greater focus on the Latin American issue is accepted by the U.S. State Department, we should expect to see new initiatives in the Trafficking in Persons Office that go beyond the limited work that is being done today to address this emergency.

Latin America's exploding human trafficking crisis was virtually ignored during the past decade by the U.S. Government, except where foes of the U.S., including Cuba and Venezuela were concerned.

The real bad guys make their money in Mexico, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Argentina. The Mexican trafficking mafias enslave 500,000 sex trafficking victims, according to Teresa Ulloa, director of the Latina American and Caribbean office of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Children. Yet the U.S. State Department declares, following the estimates developed by the United Nations funded International Labor Organization (ILO), that only 1.5 million sex slaves exist in the entire world.

So if both Teresa Ulloa and the ILO are to be believed, then Mexico has 1/3 of the world's sex slaves? Something is wrong with these numbers.

In addition, Save the Children has recognized that the southern Mexican border region is the largest area for the commercial sexual exploitation of children in the entire world. That fact is also missing from the 2009 TIP report.

We do not need another 8 years of obfuscation about the true and horrific magnitude of modern human slavery in Latin America.

We also do not need a diminished focus on this emergency because the forces that favor the legalization of prostitution are strongly represented in liberal Democratic circles. Their work is largely academic, and it does not account for the mass victimization of children and underage youth, especially in Latin America, who cannot possibly be seen as consenting, willing participants in the sex trade.

As well, we do not need to limit action against human trafficking to only a focus on further adoption of the Palermo Protocol, an approach which was defined during a gathering of diplomats at the United Nations on May 13, 2009 as being ineffective.

As we have stated before... We are encouraged by the brave efforts of United Nations diplomats and Ecuadorian Minister of Justice and Human Rights (Attorney General) Néstor Arbito Chica to promote a Global Plan of Action to get around the very clear fact that the Palermo Protocol, and regional efforts by the Organization of American States (OAS) are insufficient to successfully fight this aggressive criminal war against a whole generation of Latin American and especially Indigenous women and girls.

We look forward to seeing the United States take a leading role to step-up efforts to bring this crisis under control. We also look forward to seeing the U.S. State Department demonstrate leadership in addressing the hard issues in Latin America without seeing the rules changed behind closed doors in favor of quieting criticism of U.S. allies in the region, something that was quite blatant during the last U.S. Administration.

Those at risk, and those who are today enslaved in the region deserve our undivided attention and an honest approach to ending the condoned and officially sanctioned mass gender atrocity that is modern human slavery in Latin America.

The time of the Roman Empire is over!

Free my people now!

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

June 21/22, 2009

See also:

En Japón, de 3 a 4 mil niñas mexicanas víctimas de ESCI

Afirma la experta Teresa Ulloa

Three to four thousand underage indigenous girls from the poor states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero and Mexico [state] have become victims of commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) in Japan.

Puebla city, in Puebla state - Teresa Ulloa, Latin America and Caribbean Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking of Women (CATW) announced her estimates of the numbers of indigenous children sex trafficked to Japan, and explained that traffickers trick the victims using offers of thousands of dollars for their parents in exchange for  [obtaining permission] to take their daughters. The parents are told that their girls are going to the United States to work in fast food restaurant jobs.

Taking advantage of the condition of submission that Mexico's indigenous communities are forced to live in, the traffickers take their victims to Japan where they are prostituted and work as geishas, a role that Asian women no-longer want to play because today they have more decision-making power than in the past.

Ulloa said that before these victims from Japan are repatriated, the home conditions of these girls must be investigated to assure that they can be reintegrated without facing the risk of being sold or sexually exploited again.

Ulloa noted that in the year 2002 the CATW helped to repatriate two sisters, ages 8 and 10, who had been prostituted in a brothel in New York. They were subjected to exploitation again, 15 days later, because their family "had sold their daughters in exchange for two goats and two cases of beer."

During her interview with CIMAC Noticias, Ulloa declared: "the subject [of child protection] is not on the national agenda. Much attention is paid to drug trafficking, but the government hasn't even realized that the same drug trafficking networks are used for the [sex] trafficking of children, and that organized crime regards this activity to be one of their most important businesses." ...

Nadia Altamirano Díaz

CIMAC Noticias

Dec. 12, 2008

See also:

Mexico: Más de un millón de menores se prostituyen en el centro del país: especialista

Expert: More than one million minors are sexually exploited in Central Mexico

Tlaxcala city, in Tlaxcala state - Around 1.5 million people in the central region of Mexico are engaged in prostitution, and some 75% of them are between 12 and 13 years of age, reported Teresa Ulloa, director of the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean...

During an international seminar in the city of Tlaxcala, Ulloa noted that, due to the conditions of marginalization in which they live, at least 50 million women and children in Latin America are at risk of being recruited for sexual exploitation.

La Jornada de Oriente

Sep. 26, 2007


Added: June 22, 2009

The United States - Latin America

The US Human Trafficking Report 2009: Whatever makes you think it's political?

The USA sometimes tries to make out the "equal partners" thing with the rest of the Americas and sometimes it doesn't. You get The Hawaiian making some lip service to the greater cause at the moment, but when push comes to shove and the bureaucrats are let loose, those old habits of arrogance, selective memory based on friendships and high-handedness towards "the brown people down there" shine on through.

Today the US State Department's ninth annual "Trafficking in Persons Report" was published, and here's how the region stacks up in the eyes of TheWorldPoliceman.™

Level One (complies with all, we luvs ya): Colombia

Level Two (not up to scratch but we see you're making an effort, try a bit harder, boyz): Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay.

Level Three (hmmm..not so good, kiddies. We're watching you so don't do anything stupid): Argentina, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Rep Dom, Venezuela

Level Four (bad bad bad naughty naughty sanctions sanctions): Cuba

But the biggest guilty party on human trafficking is left off the list completely. The country where many labor and sex slaves are sent by their paymasters and blind eyes are turned. Go on....take a wild guess as to which one.

The Democratic Underground

June 16, 2009


Added: June 21, 2009

The Americas

2009 TIP Ratings
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 2 Watch List
Tier 3

2009 U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report - Nations of the Americas

A-C: Antigua and Barbuda (Tier 2), Argentina (Tier 2 Watch List), Bahamas (Tier 2), Barbados (Tier 2), Belize (Tier 2 Watch List), Bolivia (Tier 2), Brazil (Tier 2), Canada (Tier 1), Chile (Tier 2), Colombia (Tier 1), Costa Rica (Tier 2), Cuba (Tier 3)

D-K: Dominican Republic (Tier 2 Watch List), Ecuador (Tier 2), El Salvador (Tier 2), Guatemala (Tier 2 Watch List), Guyana (Tier 2 Watch List), Haiti (missing), Honduras (Tier 2), Jamaica (Tier 2)

L-P: Mexico (Tier 2), Nicaragua (Tier 2 Watch List), Panama (Tier 2), Paraguay (Tier 2), Peru (Tier 2)

Q-Z: ST. Vincent and the Grenadines (Tier 2 Watch List), Trinidad and Tobago (Tier 2), Uruguay (Tier 2), Venezuela (Tier 2 Watch List)

See also:

Letter from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Letter from Ambassador Luis C. de Baca

Introduction

Major Forms of Trafficking in Persons

The Three P's: Punishment, Protection, Prevention

Financial Crisis and Human Trafficking

Topics of Special Interest

Victims' Stories

Global Law Enforcement Data

Commendable Intiatives Around the World

2009 TIP Report Heroes

Tier Placements

Maps

U.S. Government Domestic Anti-Trafficking Efforts

U.S. Department of State Office of Trafficking in Persons

June 16, 2009


Added: June 20, 2009

Guatemala 

Justicia parece no llegar en casos de niñas víctimas de violencia

El sistema de justicia parece no ser efectivo en los casos de tres niñas asesinadas recientemente en San Lucas Sacatepéquez y de una menor violada en Sololá, ya que se han registrado señales de negligencia en las investigaciones y parcialidad en el estudio de las pruebas, denunció la Fundación Sobrevivientes...

Justice Appears Distant in Cases of Girl Victims of Violence

The non-governmental organization La Fundación Sobrevivientes (the Survivor’s Foundation) has denounced the fact that Guatemala’s justice system does not appear to be working effectively in two criminal cases: 1) that of three girls killed recently in San Lucas Sacatepequez; and 2) the case of a minor girl raped in the city of Sololá. The Foundation states that there have been indications of negligence and bias in the evaluation of the evidence in these cases.

In the first case, a 13-year-old girl was raped on July 8, 2008 in Sololá. Judge Frank Armando Martínez allowed the accused assailant, Martín Tambríz, to be freed despite conclusive evidence of his guilt. Forensic evidence had showed a positive DNA match tying Tambríz to the rape. The Foundation plans to appeal the acquittal.

Lawyers for the Survivor’s Foundation also expressed concern about the case of three girls, ages 7, 8 and 12, who were “butchered” on May 29, 2009 in the hamlet Chicamán in San Lucas Sacatepequez. It was ascertained that one of the victim’s was raped. Three men suspected in the crime have been detained. The Foundation emphasizes that there are signs of negligence in the investigation conducted by the District Attorney of Sacatepéquez, a fact that will not contribute to solving these crimes.

The Survivor’s Foundation has asked that the case be moved to the capital, Guatemala City to insure that the investigation and preparations for prosecution are able to be observed, ensuring that due process is respected in the case.

CERIGUA

June 19, 2009


Added: June 20, 2009

Guatemala

Juana Méndez, right, and her translator explain in Court how one of the two police-men who raped her told her after the attack: "Why are you complaining? I will put two bullets into you and throw you over an embankment."

From the documentary film on the Juana Méndez case (in Spanish on YouTube)

Guatemala.- Una indígena guatemalteca es la primera mujer maya que logra que encarcelen a un policía por haberla violado

Nebaj - La indígena guatemalteca Juana Méndez ha sido la primera mujer maya que abre un proceso judicial contra un policial por haberla violado y logra que sea condenado, según contó ella misma en una entrevista con Europa Press.

El gran índice de impunidad en delitos contra las mujeres, según han denunciado reiteradamente asociaciones feministas, se rompe así con este caso. A Méndez "le hicieron daño" y ella "no lo quiso dejarlo así, quiso decir la verdad".

Pese a las amenazas de muerte y a los consejos que personas de su entorno le reiteraban para que retirase del proceso contra el policía, ella decidió seguir adelante. "Qué pienso, que tiene que haber ley; si un hombre me hizo eso, tiene que pagarlo"...

An Indigenous Mayan Woman has Become the First Female in Guatemala's History to Achieve the Conviction and Imprisonment of a Police Officer for Having Raped Her in Custody

Nebaj - Juana Méndez has become the first Mayan woman [in this Mayan majority nation] to pursue legal proceedings against a policeman for the crime of rape resulting in a conviction and a prison sentence.

This case succeeded despite the high rate of impunity for crimes against women, an issue that has repeatedly been raised by feminists.  Méndez stated: "they did me harm" and she "did not want to leave it at that, I wanted to tell the truth."

Despite death threats and the repeated advice from people around her to withdraw the case against the policemen, she decided to go ahead. "What do I believe? I believe that the rule of law has to exist. If a man does that to you, he has to pay.” Juana Mendez said that with the full support of her husband, who had told his wife that he would not respond to this problem with domestic violence [a common reaction of the husbands of rape victims]…

Méndez’ struggle for justice caused her insomnia from fear, and she couldn’t eat. But she never retreated, saying, “I had to tell the truth.” "I told the judge that these policemen had raped me.” Her female friends told her that she should not pursue the case, because her husband would beat her. She replied to them: “I don’t care if my husband beats me. I am going to tell the truth.”

The one policeman who was tried has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Asked whether