Latina Women & Children at Risk

About the Mass-Murder of Women and Girls in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

Last Updated on Mayo 6 / May 6, 2009

A 'Femicide' is Taking

Hundreds of Lives

in the Juarez City, Chihuahua State, Mexico and El Paso, Texas (U.S.) Border Region

Noticias d la Crisis en Ciudad Juarez

Ciudad Juarez Crisis News

End this violence against women now!

Not even one more victim!!

Femicide in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

Remember Them!

Latest News

Una colleción de mas de 160 articulos sobre el Feminicidio de CIMAC

CIMAC Noticias' collection of 160+ articles on the femicide in Ciudad Juarez (in Spanish)

Added: May 06, 2009

Mexico, Chile

Three mothers testified in Chile against the state of Mexico for their daughters' murders.

(From left to right) Josefina Gonazalez, U.N representative Florenti Melendez, Irma Monreal, and Benita Monarrez.

Photo by Maria Grusauskas - The Santiago Times

Estado mexicano espera sentencia por feminicidio en Juárez

CoIDH juzga tres asesinatos de Campo Algodonero

México DF - El gobierno es internacionalmente responsable por la desaparición y muerte de Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, Claudia Ivette González y Laura Berenice Ramos Monárrez, cuyos cuerpos, torturados y abusados sexualmente, fueron tirados en el predio Campo Algodonero, en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.

El gobierno no las protegió, no previno sus asesinatos, aunque conocía el patrón de violencia de género en la región, que ha dejado cientos de mujeres y niñas asesinadas, y las autoridades de Ciudad Juárez no respondieron a las denuncias.

Esa es la acusación que hicieron ante la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CoIDH) Irma Monreal, Josefina González y Benita Monárrez, madres de las víctimas, quienes esperaron ocho años para que sus testimonios fueran escuchados por autoridades judiciales sin sorna ni escepticismo...

Nancy Betán Santana, Guadalupe Gómez Quintana

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

May 04, 2009

Update: Juárez, Mexico femicides trial in Chile

Mexico Has Until June To Comply With Court Orders

On April 29 the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights in Santiago ruled that the State of México is responsible for the hundreds of femicides that have taken place in Juárez, Mexico over the past 15 years. The court will next review the statements and documents provided by the state of México between June 1 and November 2009 and will make its final verdict in November.

The Santiago Times

May 4, 2009

Added: May 06, 2009

Mexico

Lawsuit blames Mexican government for Juarez femicides

A collection of legal and human rights organizations are suing the Mexican government before an international court for failing to adequately investigate the torture and killings of women in Ciudad Juarez. It is thought that more than 500 women have been killed in Juarez since 1993.

The lawsuit before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights blames the federal government for failing to prevent the kidnapping, torture, and killing of eight women, specifically, whose bodies were found in November, 2001. All displayed clear signs of torture.

The groups bringing the lawsuit include the National Association of Democratic Lawyers and the Committee of Latin America for the Defense of the Rights of Women, among others.

Ariel Dulitzky, a University of Texas professor and legal advisor to the groups bringing the lawsuit, said the complaint alleges the locals and state police didn’t maintain crime scenes properly and didn’t identify the bodies until six and seven years later…

“Today, seven years later, there is nobody being prosecuted for these killings,” Dulitzky said.

He expects the case to be decided by September or November of this year.

The San Antonio Current

May 5, 2009

Added: March 14, 2009

Mexico

Calderon Rejects ‘Absurd’ Reports on Mexico Drug War

Mexican President Felipe Calderon delivered his strongest defense yet of his government’s fight against drug cartels, alleging some U.S. officials are corrupt and accusing the media of lying.

“To say that Mexico doesn’t have authority over all of its national territory is absolutely false and absurd,” Calderon said today in Mexico City.

Mexico hasn’t lost any territory to traffickers, Calderon said. He criticized the media for mounting a campaign of “lies” against Mexico. His comments come two days after Dennis Blair, U.S. Director of National Intelligence, said Mexico isn’t in charge of parts of the country…

“How can you explain a drug market so large in the U.S. -- the largest market in the world -- without the corruption of certain U.S. authorities,” Calderon said…

Drug war-related deaths reached a record 6,290 last year and Mexico increasingly blames the U.S. for the carnage, saying the U.S. has done little to stop the flow of arms into Mexico and to curtail demand for drugs at home.

The U.S.’s Blair told a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting on March 10 that “the corruptive influence and increasing violence of Mexican drug cartels impedes Mexico City’s ability to govern parts of its territory.”

…President Barack Obama said that, while he’s concerned about escalating drug violence, there’s no need yet to send U.S. troops to the border, the Dallas Morning News reported…

Texas Governor Rick Perry has called on Washington to send a thousand troops or border agents to the region because Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, has become a focal point of drug violence, the Morning News reported.

At a White House briefing today, spokesman Robert Gibbs reiterated the administration’s policy that violence is “not going to be solved in the long term through the militarization of the border.”

…Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman made Forbes magazine’s annual billionaires list for the first time this year, underscoring the growing power of the country’s cartels. Guzman, 54, has a net worth of $1 billion, making him the world’s 701st wealthiest person, according to Forbes. He heads a drug cartel based in the western state of Sinaloa.

“It’s unfortunate that a campaign has escalated that seems to be a campaign against Mexico,” Calderon said. “Public opinion and even magazines aren’t only dedicated to attacking and lying about Mexico’s situation, but also to exalting criminals.”

Mexican cartels sell $13.8 billion a year worth of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and amphetamines to U.S. drug users, according to White House figures. Mexico is the corridor for about 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the U.S.

Numerous high-ranking Mexican police officials and prosecutors have been accused of collaborating with traffickers.

U.S. officials such as Democratic Representative Nita Lowey of New York and Kentucky Republican Hal Rogers have urged Obama’s administration to make violence in Mexico a priority...

By Jens Erik Gould

March 12

Bloomberg

LibertadLatina Commentary

The recent comments of President Felipe Calderon, accusing high ranking United States officials and a large number of U.S. government agencies of corruption and complicity in promoting U.S. consumption of illicit drugs produced in Mexico is, on its face, patently absurd.

President Calderon's accusations appear to be a firebreak - a tactic in firefighting and politics where you set a counter-fire to contain a firestorm. He is hurling accusations to deflect legitimate criticism that his government is losing control and that it has a major problem with corruption, across the board.

Although we are not drug enforcement analysts, we can use as a comparison an analysis of the Mexican government's response to the issue of modern human slavery, sex trafficking and to the gender hostile living environments that exist across Mexico, as examples of the types of results that occur when federal, state and local government agencies refuse to act in the face of criminal impunity.

Here are a few of the cases that we have covered over the past several years at LibertadLatina that raise legitimate concerns that Mexico's government faces serious issues of official corruption and collusion with wealthy criminal enterprises across the nation of Mexico...

Crisis Issue # 1

According to non-governmental organizations working along Mexico's southern border with Guatemala, between 164,000 and 220,000 migrant women and underage girls are sexually assaulted with impunity each year, with absolutely no Mexican law enforcement response whatsoever. And that is just the figure for the southern border region. In some of these cases, policemen are themselves the rapists. In addition to rape, many of these women and girls are enslaved and sold to brothels around the world.

It is a legitimate concern that Mexico indeed has no effective control over its southern border region. That zone is effectively owned by ruthless gang rapists and well-organized and well-funded traffickers in women, children and illicit drugs.

Crisis Issue # 2

In the face of a catastrophic level of murders of women (typically involving gang rape, torture and mutilation), at a level that has required that a new term be defined - femicide - to describe the phenomenon, President Felipe Calderon's National Action Party (PAN), and their top conservative allies in the Church have declared publicly that women in Ciudad Juarez (the mega-center of femicide in the nation) and across Mexico were themselves to blame for being kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered. They assert that such incidents are the result of the actions of immodest women who wear short skirts - and that these horrors are not the fault of raping, homicidal men who act with impunity.

PAN party member and former Ciudad Juarez mayor Francisco Javier Barrio Terrazas (recently appointed as Mexico's Ambassador to Canada, for example), has publicly expressed the idea that women kidnapped and raped in Ciudad Juarez brought such troubles upon themselves for being immodest.

When Barrio Terrazas was the mayor of Ciudad Juarez, and later when he was the governor of the State of Chihuahua (where Ciudad Juarez sits), he staunchly refused to form any special investigative body to address the issue of femicide . He also rejected federal efforts to intervene in the crisis.

Barrio Terrazas therefore recently drew a a rebuke of his appointment as Ambassador to Canada by Return Our Daughters Home, an organiza-tion of mothers of femicide victims in Ciudad Juarez, who had earlier sought Barrio Terrazas' help to end the murder-spree in Chihuahua. As the environment of impunity continues in Ciudad Juarez, leaders of Return Our Daughters Home face constant death threats in response to their anti-femicide activism.

The same conservative and blatantly misogynist PAN political beliefs are also apparently the root cause for the fact that President Calderon had intentionally delayed publishing the federal regulations required to enforce the nation's first anti-slavery legislation for 11 months after the bill's signing into law, thus weakening the intent of Congress to finally provide effective tools to federal agencies to coordinate their efforts to fight rampant sex and labor trafficking.

Crisis Issue # 3

Award-winning women and children's rights activist, author and journalist Lydia Cacho was kidnapped by corrupt state police agents, threatened with rape and jailed in Puebla state on trumped-up charges (an allegation that is validated by secretly-taped conversations between Puebla state's governor and one of the richest child sex traffickers in the country), in retaliation for having written a book exposing child sex trafficking in Cancun and the mass corruption on the part of government and wealthy business interests involved.

In response, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) ruled that it could not investigate, (as the Constitution authorizes the Court to do in cases of state corruption) because Lydia Cacho's basic rights and guarantees were not violated.

When the Court voted, Lydia Cacho, observing the proceedings on closed circuit television in a supportive congress-woman's office, reported that the Chief Justice burst out laughing when the final vote rejecting the investigation was cast. This occurred despite the fact that an Associate Justice' report found probable cause to investigate.

In response to that act, the federal Attorney General's special prosecutor for violence against women, Alicia Elena Perez Duarte, resigned in utter disgust. The investigation that Perez Duarte started into the perpetrators in the Lydia Cacho case literally vanished into thin air after the case was passed-on to the woman who followed Perez Duarte as the special prosecutor for violence against women and human trafficking.

Crisis Issue # 4

As Lydia Cacho reported in a recent editorial, anti-child-porn investigators in Britain are astonished that the Mexican Attorney General's office was the only foreign enforcement agency that refused to collaborate with their efforts to track down Internet-based child pornography abusers.

With this long history of acts of indifference, impunity and official corruption, being accusations that are made daily by congressional members, activists in the Mexican Women's Movement and journalists, it is hard to fathom the idea that corruption does not exist, as President Calderon has recently implied, and that such dishonesty does not impact Mexican policy and action against drug traffickers, human traffickers and the millions of men who exploit women and girls in their communities. In reality, the greed of such criminals and the multi-billion dollar drug and sex trafficking cartels have taken over effective control of much of the political and economic life across Mexico.

For good reasons, we at LibertadLatina focus a lot of attention on documenting news about the crisis in gender rights in Mexico.

As the gateway for almost all migrants attempting to escape the gender hostile living environment and poverty in Latin America to reach the U.S., as a mega-center of modern sex trafficking and slavery, as a center for the open exploitation of indigenous women and girls, and as a society with a well-established women's rights movement - one with exceptional journalistic skills - Mexico and its crisis is uniquely visible for the world community to see close-up.

Our goal is, in-part, to translate some of the huge volume of press and civil society documentation that exists in the Spanish language in response to this crisis. Some academics, non-governmental organizations and government agencies in the U.S. have misunderstood the intensity of the gender crisis in Mexico and across Latin America. LibertadLatina accurately presents the facts so that well-informed decisions can be made by those who have the power to change the situation on the ground. That includes general public, politicians and activists.

The mass gender atrocities that women and girls face across Mexico, from femicide to sex trafficking to a condoned culture of the rape of women and children, must be responded to by people of conscience across the world. The Calderon administration has not stepped up to the plate to defend women and girls. Shame on them!

The basic reasons why a charge of corruption is valid against government officials in Mexico include the fact that such corruption openly exists at all levels of government. This 'culture of impunity' is one that is reinforced by Mexico's centuries-old traditions of institutional sexism, anti-Indigenous racism and classism, and today allow mass gender atrocities to occur. It is an environment that is completely free from any risk that a rapist, kidnapper, murderer or sex trafficker of innocent women and children will ever be prosecuted or jailed.

Last, we are also not impressed with the fact that President Calderon has hurled a charge of corruption against the U.S. during the beginning of the administration of President Barak Obama. President Calderon never said such things during the administration of former President George W. Bush (who kept quiet about corruption in Mexico).

It appears obvious that President Obama's willingness to allow some honesty into the official dialog about corruption in Mexico is ruffling President Calderon's feathers.

Now that the discussion has hit a nerve in Mexico in regard to the realities surrounding illicit drug trafficking and corruption, it is time to take the discussion up a notch, and for the Obama Administration to demand that President Calderon end his administration's institutionalized sexist policies and official inaction that allows mass gender atrocities to take place across Mexico with impunity.

President Calderon must end the gender hostile living environment in Mexico that today denies the fundamental rights of citizen and migrant women and girl children to a life free from rape, kidnapping and sale into sex slavery en mass!

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

March 14, 2009

Added: Feb. 01, 2009

Mexico

La ropa provoca, dice clero a mujeres

Autoridades eclesiásticas responsabilizaron a las mujeres de ser culpables de las agresiones sexuales que sufren, debido a la ropa “provocativa” que visten

Clothing Provokes Violence, Clergy Tells Women [Translation by Kristin Bricker]

Ecclesiastical authorities say women are to blame for the sexual aggressions they suffer, due to the "provocative" clothing they wear.

Kristin Bricker's note:

The Catholic Church held its Sixth World Meeting of the Families in Mexico City this month.

The World Meeting of the Families was founded by Pope John Paul II. Mexican President Felipe Calderon gave the surprise keynote address at the beginning of the conference.

Ecclesiastical authorities blame women for the sexual aggressions they suffer due to the "provocative" clothing they wear.
With plunging necklines and mini-skirts, "they're provoking men," said the archbishop of Santo Domingo, Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodrigez during the Sixth World Meeting of the Families.

Women expose themselves to rape, to being used, to being treated like an old dishrag, because they devalue themselves and their dignity, said the auxiliary bishop of Tegucigalpa, Darwin Rudy Andino.

Likewise, laypersons who attended the meeting said that women are the ones responsible for physical as well as verbal attacks. They should dress modestly and not arouse kinkiness in other people.

"It's their fault that they attack them," added Ecuadorian Alexandra Marcillo.

Renato Ascencio, the bishop of Ciudad Juarez said: women should not only change the way they dress, but also their behavior. Modesty has been lost in the Mexican family...

The World Meeting of the Families' official website recommends that women don't use provocative clothing, that they watch how they look and gesture at other people, and that they don't allow "hot jokes."

Additional notes from Kristin Bricker:

*Ciudad Juarez is internationally considered to be the femicide capital of Mexico. While accurate estimates of how many women have been murdered in Juarez are unavailable, what is most striking is how the dead women are found. They are often raped and sexually mutilated beyond recognition.

Bishop Renato Ascencio's statement leads one to believe that he thinks women's lack of modesty causes men to kidnap them, rape them, bite off their nipples and mutilate them in other ways, murder them, and hide their bodies for months before dumping multiple bodies killed in the same manner in a field in his city.

Is women's lack of modesty also to blame for the fact that these murders almost always go unpunished, and that Mexican police rarely carry out rigorous investigations?

Autoridades eclesiásticas responsabilizaron a la mujer de ser culpables de las agresiones sexuales que sufren, debido a la ropa “provocativa” que visten.

Con escotes pronunciados y minifaldas “está provocando al hombre”, dijo el arzobispo de Santo Domingo, Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez, durante el sexto Encuentro Mundial de las Familias.

Las mujeres se exponen a violaciones, a que las usen, que las traten como un trapo viejo, porque desvaloran su persona y su dignidad, dijo por su parte el obispo auxiliar de Tegucigalpa, Darwin Rudy Andino...

Natalia Gomez Quintero and Noemi Gutierrez

El Universal - Mexico City

Jan. 16, 2009

Translated by Kristin Bricker

Jan. 17, 2009

El foro de El Universal sobre el tema

(El Universal newspaper's Internet forum about this story)

Added: Jan. 18, 2009

Mexico

Barrio Terrazas: dejó atrás el feminicidio y es embajador en Canadá

Las víctimas ocasionaron su muerte, decía el ex gobernador

Mexico Congress has confirmed Francisco Javier Barrio Terrazas, of the National Action Party (PAN), as ambassador to Canada. Barrio Terrazas once declared that the murders of women in Ciudad Juarez, in Chihuahua state - of which there are over 400 to date - were "natural" because the victims were walking in dark places and had dressed provocatively in miniskirts.

Barrio Terrazas was the Mayor of Ciudad Juarez in the 1980s, and became Chihuahua state's governor in 1992.

This week, the plenary session of the Standing Committee of Congress approved Francisco Javier Barrio Terrazas as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Mexico to Canada.

On January 7th, 2009 President Felipe Calderón nominated Barrio Terrazas for Senate confirmation. Barrio Terrazas did not solve the femicide Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua. He refused to create a special prosecutor's office the cases, and had received a recommendation from the National Human Rights (Commission that he be censured for impunity and neglect in investigating the murders.

Only the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) questioned the presidential appointment and abstained in the vote. Gerardo Villanueva of the Aztec Sun Party added his concerns that Barrio Terrazas had "done little or nothing in the fight against corruption in Mexico."

Pleas fall on deaf ears

During Barrio Terrazas' time as governor of Chihuahua, a coalition of community organizations called the Pro-Women Coordination called for the creation of a special prosecutor's office to investigate the crimes of women.

In 1997 Barrio Terrazas said that "special prosecutors have never been useful for anything." During the same year the national Congress set up a Special Commission to come to Ciudad Juárez to verify status of investigations.

Barrio Terrazas ended 1997 still refusing to create the special prosecutor's office. In January 1998, one month after Barrio Terrazas met with the visiting federal commission, he finally agreed to create a special prosecutor's office, and appointed Maria Antonieta Esparza as its head.

Also during 1998, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) addressed the case of femicide in the region and issued recommendations that highlighted the existence of impunity, and noted deficiencies in the investigations. For the first time in its history, the CNDH declared that sexism had impeded the investigation.

Shortly before the CNDH report was published, then ex-governor Barrio Terrazas stated that the rate of crimes against women in the region were within the "normal" range.

As CIMAC Noticias has documented, Barrio Terrazas has always minimized the importance of femicide, much as did former PRI (Institutional Revolutionary party) governor (from 1998 2004) Patricio Martinez, who said that the women who were murdered had caused their own deaths.

Today femicide remains an unresolved issue in Chihuahua state, to such a degree that on January 7, 2009, the same day that Calderon nominated Barrio Terrazas, the organizations Justice for Our Daughters and the Center for Human Rights for Women submitted to the Standing Committee of the Congress of Chihuahua state a petition to activate a Gender Alert, a law enforcement state of emergency that is stipulated in the state's Law Giving Women the Right to a Life Free of Violence.

The request is a reaction to the ongoing femicide. Far from being a settled issue, acts of femicide murder claimed two lives in the first week of 2009, according to Luz Estela Castro, coordinator of the Center for Human Rights for Women.

Since November 25, 2008, the Day of Non-violence Against Women, to date, media have reported the malicious killings of 20 women. Fifty percent of those cases involved domestic violence.

As Lucha Castro says, "the femicide today has a history, which is one of neglect and apathy in the case of the missing victims." And part of that story involves the failure to act by officials, including former governor Barrio Terrazas, who dismissed the cries of help for the victims. So, stated the mothers of the victims, "we talk of negligence and complicity."

México DF, 16 enero 09 (CIMAC).- México ratificó como embajador ante el Gobierno de Canadá al hombre que afirmó que los asesinatos de mujeres en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua --más de 400 hasta hoy-- era una situación “natural”, en virtud de que las víctimas caminaban por sitios oscuros y “se vestían de manera provocativa” con minifaldas: Francisco Javier Barrio Terrazas, del Partido Acción Nacional (PAN).

Esta semana, el Pleno de la Comisión Permanente aprobó el dictamen por el que se ratificó como Embajador Extraordinario y Plenipotenciario de México en Canadá a quien fuera también Presidente Municipal de Ciudad Juárez y Gobernador de Chihuahua, en 1983 y 1992, respectivamente.

Fue Felipe Calderón quien el 7 de enero de 2009 le propuso al Senado de la República que Barrio Terrazas --cuya gestión de gobierno no solucionó el feminicidio en su entidad, se negó a crear una Fiscalía especial y recibió una recomendación de la Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH) por impunidad y negligencia en las investigaciones de los asesinatos-- fuera distinguido como embajador de México en Canadá.

Gladis Torres Ruiz

CIMAC Noticias

Jan. 18, 2009

Added Nov. 24, 2006

Mexico

More than 400 women have been abducted and murdered since 1993 in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua, Mexico, bordering El Paso, Texas just over the Rio Grande. In a significant number of cases, the brutality with which the assailants abduct and murder the women goes further than the act of killing. Many of the women are held captive for several days and subjected to humiliation, torture and the most horrific sexual violence before dying, mostly as a result of asphyxiation caused by strangulation or from being beaten.

- Amnesty International
11-23-2006

See also:

Added Nov. 24, 2006

A slideshow about the femicide in Ciudad Juarez is available. Organize a display in your community!

- Amnesty International

Added Feb. 13, 2006

Mexico

Unresolved Murders of Women Rankle in Mexican Border City

...For years, the mysterious deaths and disappearances of [377 girls and] women have frustrated officials and terrified families in Juarez, a transient city where 1000s of women live in shantytowns and work in maquila-doras, the factories on the U.S. border that produce electronic circuit boards & auto parts.

About a fourth of the victims were kidnapped, raped and strangled in a similar way, leading victims' families to believe that a sexual serial killer remains on the loose. The whereabouts of almost 40 other women who have disappeared since 1993 are still unknown. And this year, the number of homicides with female victims has surged to 30, although authorities attribute 80 percent of them to domestic or family violence.

More than 100 of the murder cases remain unsolved because of bungling by inept or corrupt officials, according to investigations by the United Nations, Amnesty Inter-national, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and other groups. Mexican federal officials have conceded negligence due to lack of resources and investigative or technical skills.

- Sylvia Moreno

Washington Post

Dec. 16, 2005

Added Jan. 1, 2006

Ciudad Juarez (Juarez City) - Mario Loya Aguirre and Jorge Armando Sifuentes Martinez – both detained on Dec. 25 – and Eleazar Pena Navarro Three men have been arrested for the Christmas Eve rape and homicide of a 17-year-old girl on December 24th, 2005.

According to statements from 2 of the suspects, the three men were drinking with Claudia Flores Javier in her home in the early hours of Dec. 24 when one of them proposed having sex with her. She refused and the three then raped her, said Claudia Elena Banuelos, spokes-woman for the state Attorney General's office. One of the men responded to Flores' resistance by hitting her several times on the head with a blunt object.

- SignOnSanDiego.com

Dec. 29, 2005

Juarez Protest Photo: CIMAC

Femicidio en Ciudad Juarez - Termina el año con dos asesinatos de mujeres.

Femicide in Juarez - It has been 13 years since the femicide murders in Juarez, Mexico began to be reported.

On December 24, 2005 the body of 17-year-old Claudia Flores Javier appeared in her apartment with signs of having been raped.

At the same time, 38-year-old Patricia Rodríguez Hernández was murdered by her ex-husband. Both victims were shot to death.

On December 21^st, a female sex worker was also found murdered, with signs of sexual assault.

During 2005, 36 women were murdered just in the zone close-in to Juarez City. These statistics are similar to those of 2004.

- CIMAC Noticias

News for Women - Mexico

Dec. 26, 2005

Added Nov. 13, 2005

Mexican police have found the body of a woman apparently beaten to death in Ciudad Juarez, a violent city on the U.S. border notorious for gender violence, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

More than 350 women have been stabbed, strangled and beaten to death in Ciudad Juarez, which lies south of El Paso, Texas, in a 12-year killing spree that has triggered condemnation in Mexico and abroad.

- Reuters

Nov. 8, 2005

Added Sep. 25 2005

Bajo formal prisión, tres feminicidas de Juárez.

En otro caso, Presunto asesino de una menor, en centro de rehabilitación.

Three suspects are in pre-trial detention in the murder cases of Alma Belén Ortega, and her mother, Alma Delia Moreno, whose bodies were found on September 13, 2005 in Juárez.

Also, the alleged murderer of a 15 year old girl murdered on September 17, 2005 in Juárez is put behind bars.

CimacNoticias

September 23, 2005

Mexico Solidarity Network Organizes October, 2005 Campaign & Tour Against Femicide in Juarez and Injustice in Exploitive Low Wage Border Factories (Maquilladoras).

July 7, 2005

Twelve Men Repeatedly Raped a 17-Year-Old Girl Who They 'Purchased' from a Troupe that Lures Girls In with Promises of Training for a Modeling Career.

The Criminal Gang , Which Allegedly Included a Former Ciudad Juarez Police Officer, Paid the Victim to Attend Modeling Classes.

The Victim Was with the Gang When a Man Emerged from a Luxury SUV and Paid US $10,000 to Take Her Away.

June 7, 2005

Relatives of Murder Victims Disappointed in New Prosecutor, Storm Out of Meeting.

June 2, 2005

New Prosecutor Assigned to Killings of Women in Ciudad Juarez Emphasizes Prevention.

May 25, 2005

Mexico - More than 3,000 teachers marched through the border city of Ciudad Juarez to demand authorities find an elementary school teacher who went missing three weeks ago, and stop a string of killings of young girls.

Added May 23, 2005

Girl Age 10 is Raped, Strangled to Death and Burned in Ciudad Juarez.

Girl Age 7 is Murdered Nearby.

Added May 23, 2005

An Independent Review has Found that Some Suspects in the Killings of Women in Ciudad Juarez were Tortured into Confessing, Jeopardizing Continuing Investigations.

"These killers continue to be a threat to women and the public at large. All the while, innocent people remain behind bars." -Guadalupe Morfín, a Federal Commissioner Appointed by President Vicente Fox to Oversee Juarez Investigations.

Added May 2, 2005

WITNESS and the Mexican Government's Human Rights Commission Present New Bilingual Online Video On the Juarez, Mexico Femicide.

Added May 2, 2005

Amnesty International:

TAKE ACTION: Representative Hilda Solis and Senator Jeff Bingaman have re-introduced Congressional resolutions on the murders of nearly 400 young women in Juárez and Chihuahua, Mexico. Urge your members of congress to support these resolutions.

Added 04/04/2005

Rocio Marin, 19, is Beaten, Raped and Stabbed to Death in Juarez.

Added 04/04/2005

British Police to Help in Chihuahua

Added 03/18/ 2005

Juarez, Mexico Femicide: Murders of Women on the Rise.

Added 03/18/ 2005

U.S. - Mexico Border: One in 10 Women Raped Crossing into US - Figure is Likely Low.

Added 03/18/ 2005

Juarez, Mexico Teen Girl is Raped and Murdered.

02/20/ 2005

The United Nations Human Rights Commission Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Yakin Ertürk, Will Investigate Gender Violence in Mexico City, Chihuahua City, Ciudad Juarez and Puebla, Mexico: February 20-26, 2005.

(Thanks to the Committee of Indigenous Solidarity (CIS for this News.)

Added 02/19/ 2005

United Nations Human Rights Commission Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Yakin Ertürk, Investigated Gender Violence in Mexico City, Chihuahua City, Ciudad Juarez and Puebla, Mexico: February 20-26, 2005.

01/31/ 2005

Ciudad Juarez (Juarez City) Mexico Femicide: Critics Pressure Prosecutors.

Added 01/11/2005

Mexico to Begin Payments to the Families of Female Murder Victims in Ciudad Juarez.

01/08/2005

Juarez, Mexico Femicide: Activists Unhappy with Recent Murder Convictions.

From Amnesty International:

Since 1993, 370 women have been brutally murdered in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Mexico. Their families are often ignored or mistreated as they seek justice for their loved ones.

US Congresswoman Hilda Solis, along with five other Representatives, introduced a congressional resolution expressing sympathy for the families of the victims, and calling on the United States government to take decisive action in support of those seeking justice.

More from Amnesty International:

Stop Violence Against Women in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua, México

Over 370 women murdered, at least 137 of them after being sexually assaulted - this is the harsh reality of the violence which women and teenage girls of Chihuahua state have been subjected to since 1993, according to reports received by Amnesty International. In addition, over 70 young women are still missing, according to the authorities, though Mexican non-governmental organizations say the figure is over 400. Join Amnesty International in demanding justice for the women and girls of Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua.

A film on the Ciudad Juarez Femicide available from Mexico Solidarity Network:

"Señorita Extraviada"
"Señorita Extraviada" cuenta la historia de las más de 380 jóvenes mujeres secuestradas, violadas, y matadas de Juárez, México. Se sabían de los femicidios por primera vez en 1993, y las mujeres siguen "desapareciendo" hasta hoy en día sin esperanza alguna de llevar a los autores de los crimenes a los tribunales. Quiénes son estas mujeres de distintos caminos de vida y por qué están siendo brutalmente matadas?

Personal de la Red de Solidaridad con México que tiene experiencia en Ciudad Juárez acompaña las presentaciones públicas de esta película conmovedora y encabeza charlas después del show. Para más información, contacte a la Red de Solidaridad con México. El video también está disponible para el uso personal a $35, mas $5 de envio. Por favor mandar cheques a la Red de Solidaridad con México, 4834 N Springfield, Chicago, IL 60625.

Señorita Extraviada ("Missing Young Woman") tells the story of the over 380 kidnapped, raped and murdered young women of Juárez, Mexico. The murders first came to light in 1993, and young women continue to "disappear" to this day without any hope of bringing the perpetrators to justice. Who are these women from all walks of life and why are they brutally murdered?

Mexico Solidarity Network staff with first-hand experience in Ciudad Juarez often accompany public presentations of this moving film and lead post-show discussions. For more information, contact the Mexico Solidarity Network. The video is also available for personal use for $35 plus $5 shipping and handling. Please send checks to the Mexico Solidarity Network, 4834 N Springfield, Chicago, IL 60625.

Señorita Extraviada filmaker Lourdes Portillo's web site.

(Added to this list December 18, 2004)

Abstract on this Film from the New York Times

THE ARTS/CULTURAL DESK

August 19, 2002, Monday
Who Is Killing the Young Women of Juárez? A Filmmaker Seeks Answers
By MIREYA NAVARRO (NYT) 1179 words

LEAD PARAGRAPH - Over the last decade more than 300 women have disappeared from the streets of Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, many later found raped and murdered, their bodies dumped in ditches and the desert. But even more stunning than the number of deaths has been the failure of law enforcement officials to put a stop to the killings.

A trail of newspaper articles about the murders led Lourdes Portillo, a San Francisco filmmaker who was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, not far from Juárez, to this unsolved mystery just across the border from El Paso. Initially, she said, her intention was to profile some of the victims and create a memorial to ''these girls,'' but soon she found herself trying to figure out what happened to them and why.

Links:

Justicia Para Nuestras Hijas

(Justice for Our Daughters)

Paloma Escobar Ledezma


Desaparició el 22 de marzo de 2002.	She disappeared on March 22, 2002.
Su cuerpo fue encontrado el 29 del mismo mes en un arroyo seco a las afueras de la ciudad por unos trabajadores agrícolas.	Her body was found by agricultural workers on the 29th of the same month, in a dry gully outside of town.
La procuraduría de justicia del estado nunca hizo nada por encontrarla, salvo inventar falsos encuentros con ella, situándolos en tiempos en que, según la posterior autopsia, ya había fallecido...	The [Chihuahua] state prosecutor never did anything to find her, except to invent false sightings of her, on dates when the autopsy showed, after the fact, that she was already dead.
Luego de la localización del cadáver, se intentó fabricar un culpable, un exnovio de Paloma. La maniobra fue tan burda, que se derrumbó sola.	After finding the body, an attempt was made to falsify a suspect, an ex-boyfriend from Paloma. The plot was so inane that it fell apart by itself.
Hasta el momento no se ha detenido ni presentado a nadie más. El crimen sigue impune...	At the present time no other suspect has been found. This remains a crime of impunity.
*- Justicia Para Nuestras Hijas*

Más Enlaces / More Links:

Amnesty International's Juarez Crisis Page

Amnestia Internacional - Justicia Para las Mujeres y Niñas de Ciudad Juárez y Chihuahua, México

Bibliography about the Women of Ciudad Juárez, México - Los Angeles Valley College Library

(Added to this list December 14, 2004)

CourtTV's Externsive 11 Page Report on the Murders in Ciudad Juarez (by Michael Newton):
Since 1993, upward of 340 young women have been brutally murdered in the Mexican border town. More than a dozen suspects have been jailed, but the killing continues.

Human Rights Watch Index on the Abuse of Women Workers in Mexico - (Many Juarez Victims are Workers Who Migrated to Juarez to Find Work in Foreign Own "Maquilla" Cheap Labor Factories.)

www.JuarezWomen.com

Latin America Working Group's Juarez Page

Save Juarez Project (Self Defense Direct Action)

Washington Office on Latin America Juarez Page

News Article Archive:

2004

12/15/2004

Canadian Parliamentary Subcommittee on Human Rights Addresses the Ongoing Killing of Women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

12/12/2004

The Stories of 3 Recent Victims; More Police Officers Investigated.

12/06/2004

Nine News Stories Detail New Anti-Slavery Task Forces Created for El-Paso (next to Juarez, Mexico), and San Antonio, Texas. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) Proposes the Death Penalty "for the Most Heinous Cases."

Mothers Step Up Campaign as Cover Up Takes Hold 11-24-2004

Mexican Federal Investigation Finds No Serial Killers_or Gangs Behind Juarez Femicide 10-25-2004

Bodies_Found in Chihuahua City and Reynosa Mexcio 10-24-2004

Second_Federal Investigation Draws Anger 10-14-2004

47 Mothers of Victims to Get Homes 09-16-2004

Police_Arrest_Suspect in Recent Murder of Woman 08-10-2004

Authorities Identify Woman Slain in Ciudad Juarez 07-28-2004

Government Creates Fund to Compensate Families of Murder Victims 07-20-2004

Activists Paint_Crosses 04-17-2004

In Juarez Murders, Progress but Few Answers - 04-09-2004 - CNN

U.N. Condemns Mexico For Handling Of Juarez Murder Probe - United Nations Foundation 04-01-2004

Letter from Juarez 03-17-2004

Another Death 03-11-2004

Major New York Times Major Exposé Mexican of Women and Girls trafficked into US 01-25-2004.

This article discusses the kidnapping, rape and trafficking into the United States of poor Mexican girl children to be used as sex slaves. The article discusses the testimony of one victim who was transported repeatedly across the Ciudad Juarez, Mexico to El Paso, Texas border crossing.

(Added to this list December 14, 2004)

International Concern Growing 01-14-2004

Special Prosecutor Named 01-13-2004

2003

Juarez Activists Ask OAS Intervention 12-30-2003 (Added to this list December 14, 2004)

US Latin Congress Members Visit 12-11-2003

(Added to this list December 14, 2004)

Lat US Mexico Juarez Suspect Extradited to Mexico 12-09-2003

Theory on Killings of Juarez Women - National public Radio News 12-04-2003

Shoddy Probe 12-02-2003

Mexican Government to Pay Families 11-15-2003

Rich Killers Stalk Region 11-02-2003

US - Solidarity with Women of Juarez Event - Washington, DC 11-01-2003 (Added to this list December 14, 2004)

Amnesty Intl December 10-2003 Events

Police Probe Possible Juarez Murders Link to Organ Traffickers 09-04-2003

Who's Killing the Women of Juarez? - National Public Radio - Morning Edition 02-22-2003

2002

U.S. - 2002 "Toxic Silence" An Essay by Laura Zárate, Founding Executive Director of ArteSana.com, a Texas Based Advocacy Group. (Added to this list December 14, 2004)

U.S. - Mexico Border Region - Crisis of Anti-Female Mass-Murder in Juarez, Mexico - August 2002 (Added to this list December 12, 2004)

Women's Groups Protest the Juarez Murders of Over 300 Women - August 14, 2002 (Added to this list December 12, 2004)

Death Stalks the Border - Special Section - El Paso Times 06-23-2002

To Work and Die in Juarez - Mother Jones Magazine - May/June 2002

Women demand Mexico murder probe - Eight Women Found Murdered - BBC News 02-21-2002

Links:

Slavery Index

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

The Crisis in Mexico

Indigenous Women in Mexico

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

Map shows the epicenter of the earthquake in the Caribbean island nation of Haiti, and its proximity to the capitol city - Port-Au-Prince

Haiti

Donate to Haiti Disaster Relief

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. Join recovery efforts mobilizing around the world to assist earthquake victims. Your donation will help disaster victims rebuild their lives and their communities.

UNICEF (1-800-4UNICEF)

Mercy Corps (1-888-256-1900)

Save the Children

Lambi Fund

Doctors Without Borders

The International Rescue Committee

Care

See Also:

LibertadLatina

Special Section

About the impact of natural disasters on women and children's human rights in the Americas

Últimas Noticias

Latest News

Added: Feb. 08, 2010

Mexico

Family and friends bid farewell Wednesday to a victim of Sunday's massacre, one of 12 teens and 3 adults killed at a party in Ciudad Juarez.

Photo: Julian Cardona For the Houston Chronicle

Feb. 3, 2010

Dallas Morning News Editorial: Mexico's Rock-bottom Moment

Excerpt

Against a two-decade timeline of drug-trafficking outrages in Mexico, last Sunday's slaughter of 16 at a teenager's quinceañera party in Ciudad Juárez seems likely to follow a familiar pattern. First comes stunned horror. Then comes the national outcry to do something. Government officials get hauled before the legislature for questioning. Someone resigns. Outrage subsides. Life goes on, same as before.

The Mexican government's behavior resembles that of an addict who's yet to hit that rock-bottom moment of realization that things absolutely must change. Yes, President Felipe Calderón has deployed thousands of soldiers and police officers to border cities and targeted corrupt public figures for prosecution. But that's clearly not sufficient.

Back in the 1990s, it seemed impossible that Mexico could slide any further into the depths. Remember when a Catholic cardinal was murdered by drug-cartel gunmen in Guadalajara? Or the well-reported links between a president's brother and the drug cartels? The army general named head of Mexico's drug enforcement agency who was subsequently arrested as an operative for a major cartel? The two northern governors implicated as operatives in a major cartel?

The next decade brought unspeakable levels of violence as rival cartels vied for territorial control. Thousands died. A free-for-all atmosphere now prevails, especially in Juárez.

"Mexico has abandoned us, betrayed us," José Luís Aguilar Rangel said as he looked down upon the coffins of his son and nephew, two of the young victims of the Sunday massacre.

In late 2008, Mexico's federal human rights commission reported that, on average, prosecution and conviction occurs in only one out of every 100 crimes. That's for reported crime. In 90 percent of cases, people don't even bother. Rangel clearly isn't alone in believing the government has abandoned him.

Yet, through it all, Mexican officials consistently play down what's happening. It's worse in Guatemala, they say. Just last month, Dallas Consul General Juan Carlos Cue-Vega sought to minimize the border-area violence as mainly drug thugs killing other drug thugs.

We don't buy it. Those Juárez teens had nothing to do with the drug cartels. In December, gunmen killed the mother, sister and aunt of a military hero who had been killed participating in a drug raid. The terrorists made clear: Come after us, and we'll go after your entire family.

"Where is the line drawn on indiffer-ence? If we cannot answer this question, the assassins can continue hiding themselves under the cloak of a complicit population – [complicit] either by conviction or by apathy," the Mexico City daily El Universal commented...

Dallas Morning News

Feb. 05, 2010

See also:

LibertadLatina Commentary

From top left: Rigoberta Menchu, Esther Chavez, Teresa Ulloa and Lydia Cacho

A Rock-bottom Moment in U.S. Action to Combat Latin American Human Trafficking and Slavery?

Let's draw the line on indifference!

The February 5, 2010 editorial by the Dallas Morning News, Mexico's Rock-bottom Moment, accurately describes the atmosphere of government corruption and indifference (at the federal, state and local level) that permeates Mexico and allows criminals to engage in horrendous behavior with reckless abandon.

That reality does not only apply to the war on drug cartels. These conditions of impunity also make it nearly impossible to effectively fight modern human slavery and other forms of sexual and labor exploitation.

We say 'modern' human slavery, but in Mexico, slavery, from the time of the Spanish colonization, had actually never stopped. Poor Indigenous and mixed-race (Mestizo) peoples, who are racially marginalized in Mexico, have always been easy marks for sexual and labor exploitation. This reality impacts children especially hard.

In 1994, for example, a U.S. National Public Radio news report noted that in Mexico's southern Chiapas state, the majority indigenous population was expected to serve their whole lives as unpaid peon farm workers on the plantations of wealthy Mexicans of European descent, in exchange for nothing more than being given rice and beans.

That is slavery!

The ability to rape and demand free labor of the Indigenous and Mestizo poor in Mexico with impunity has been a 'right' of the Spanish descended elites for 500 years.

As we have stated in previous comment-aries, our focus on the crisis of gender oppression in Mexico came about because:

1) The oppression of women is severe, and especially impacts indigenous women and girls;

2) by extension, the sex trafficking industry, fueled by the multi-billion dollar drug cartels, enslaves tens of thousands of women and girls each year;

3) Mexico is Latin America's border with the United States, causing the great majority of migration and human trafficking from the region into the U.S. to be funneled through Mexico;

4) With "60 plus" percent of the human trafficking victims in the U.S. being victims who are Latin American, solving the Mexican crisis holds the key to solving foreign sex and labor trafficking in the U.S., and potentially in much of Latin America;

5) Mexico has a brave and very articulate women's rights, indigenous rights and anti-trafficking movement, lead by many unseen leaders, and others who are more visible. they dare to confront impunity in Mexico, despite the risk of government sponsored intimidation, false imprisonment and murder that they face for disrupting the status quo and the power of the elites.

How can a Mexican Government that acts to support those who oppress women be an honest partner in suppressing the power of sex and labor traffickers?

How can a Mexican society that is based upon very strongly embedded traditions of male supremacy (machismo) change to actually begin to defend the basic human rights of women and girls, when its own government fights reform to maintain the status quo?

How can a Mexico where influential business and political leaders have corrupt ties to the sex trafficking 'industry' defeat those forces?

How can activists make progress when international organizations such as Amnesty International have identified the fact that human rights activists face false imprisonment to halt their work, and, together with activist journalists, face a very real threat of being murdered?

These are the pressing questions that the women's rights movement face and seek answers to.

This movement deserves the full moral and financial and collaborative support of human rights, indigenous rights and women's rights activists, and all people of moral conscience, from across the world.

Most importantly, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama must stand up and very publicly demand that the State of Mexico stop fighting against these human rights movements, and finally adhere to their international commitments to respect the rights of women and children.

The recent track record of the Calderón administration shows that it is indifferent to the issue of human slavery, and will only take minimal action to avoid getting a bad grade (and thus risk possible U.S. sanctions) from the annual U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons report. Therefore, the movement to end slavery continues its long struggle to force the Calderón government to change its misogynist ways.

Among the leaders of Mexico's pioneering women and children's rights movement are Teresa Ulloa, a pioneering women's rights lawyer and Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women for Latin America and the Caribbean (CATW-LAC). Ulloa has been a clear voice for identifying the need to enact and enforce anti-trafficking laws. She has identified the fact that 50 million women and children are at-risk of falling into the hands of human traffickers across all of Latin America. She has also declared that 5 million victims of human trafficking exist within Mexico. Ulloa has also stated that an estimated 1.5 million persons engage in prostitution in Central Mexico alone, and that 75% of those at any given time are girls between the ages of 12 and 13. Ulloa's serious research into these problems contradicts the research of others who conclude that only 20,000 children are engaged in prostitution in Mexico.

We also salute award winning journalist, author and women's center director Lydia Cacho, who responded to the impunity in child sex trafficking in the internationally popular tourist city of Cancun, Mexico by writing a well-researched book that exposed the complex links of collaboration between millionaire entrepreneur Jean Succar Kuri and child sex trafficker and a network of other businessmen and corrupt government officials. In response to the publication of Cacho's book, in December of 2005 the child sex trafficking network exposed by Cacho arranged with the governor of Puebla state, Mario Marin, to have Puebla state police officers arrest Cacho and drive her over 1,000 miles to Puebla state to face criminal charges of defamation for the accusations made in her book. During the trip and while in prison, state officers threatened Cacho with rape and with death.

Eventually cleared of the charges, Cacho has recently faced continuing threats to her life by armed suspects who shadow her daily movements. She lives 24 hours a day with armed guards. While Cacho's supporters in Congress demanded an investigation by the Supreme Court (a role that the Court may play in state corruption cases under Mexico's constitution), and despite the fact that one Supreme Court justice assigned to investigate the case found evidence to warrant investigation of Governor Marin by the full Court, the Court's justices decided that Cacho's treatment did not constitute a violation of her basic rights.

In utter disgust at the Supreme Court's behavior in this case, the Attorney General's special prosecutor for crimes against women, Alicia Elena Perez Duarte, resigned.

Child sex trafficker Jean Succar Kuri is in jail thanks to Cacho's efforts. However Puebla Governor Mario Marin and Succar Kuri's other accomplices continue living undisturbed in complete freedom.

We posthumously salute Esther Chavez, Lydia Cacho's mentor and the founder of the movement to publicize and demand action to end the mass murder (femicide) of women in northern Mexico's Ciudad Juarez. Chavez' tireless work to confront the apathy and impunity of government officials was the training ground that taught a generation of new leadership in the Mexican women's rights movement. By extension, Esther Chavez' legacy guides all of our efforts to dare to face into the wind and openly confront misogynist terrorism across Latin America.

Like Esther Chavez, Rigoberta Menchu is a long time leader working in defense of the basic human rights of indigenous peoples. A K'iche' Maya woman from Guatemala, Menchu's work impacts conditions for indigenous women and children in both Guatemala and Mexico. Winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, Menchu was a 1997 candidate in Guatemala's presidential elections.

Rigoberta Menchu and her family survived the 1970s-to-1990s anti-Mayan genocide in Guatemala in which 200,00 people died, including 50,000 women. Several members of Menchu's family were murdered, and she, like hundreds of thousands of Mayan Guatemalans, had to flee the attempts of the nation's government to mass murder its indigenous citizens.

Today Menchu continues to promote indigenous and women's human rights through the Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation (La Fundación Rigoberta Menchú Tum).

Menchu has been especially active in efforts to end the sex trafficking of young indigenous girls in Guatemala and Mexico, where they consitute one of the largest groups victimized by commercial sexploitation of children (CSEC).

We also give high praises to the CIMAC women's news agency. Their large network of women reporters has persistently documented the outrageous injustices confronting women and girls in Mexican society. CIMAC is not afraid to point the finger at government agencies and officials where that is warranted, in addition to identifying major criminal organizations and individuals who victimize women and girls with impunity.

CIMAC's highly professional news team has described in accurate detail the facts surrounding the issues of sex trafficking, rape and other crimes against women, and the lack of legislative and law enforcement action in Mexico to protect women and girls from these atrocities.

On the single issue of the rape with impunity of (mostly indigenous women and girls) by Mexican military personnel, CIMAC has published more than 340 comprehensive articles since 2007.

In July of 2008, CIMAC's offices were ransacked by 'unknown' vandals. CIMAC's computers were destroyed or stolen. This act of intimidation occurred days after CIMAC published an article that identified the fact that high ranking military officers working at Mexico City's equivalent of the Pentagon frequented the child prostitution brothels that exist just down the street from military headquarters.

Letters of solidarity poured in from across the globe in response to these criminal acts, which remain in impunity.

We especially applaud the fact that CIMAC for covering the mass gender atrocities facing poor indigenous women in a Mexico where such crimes are never, ever punished.

A Google search of the CIMAC News web site shows that:

* 120 CIMAC articles mention Rigoberta Menchu

* 170 CIMAC articles mention the late Esther Chavez

* 120 CIMAC articles mention Teresa Ulloa

* 550 CIMAC articles mention Lydia Cacho

We also give kudos to CIMAC for publishing information from the International Organization for Migration's office in Tapachula, noting that the southern Mexican border with Guatemala is a lawless zone where between 450 and 600 women and girl migrants from Central and South America are raped each day. The same CIMAC article notes that the global NGO Save the Children has identified southern Mexico as being the largest zone for the commercial sexual exploitation of children in the entire world.

Thanks to the trailblazing work of these brave journalists and activists, the criminals, the wealthy business owners and corrupt public servants who cooperate with them can no longer hide under a rock. The evidence is irrefutable that an ongoing mass gender atrocity is taking place in Mexico, and neither the Mexican federal government (lead by a National Action Party which has openly misogynist policies), nor the United States is taking any visible action of significance to stop that violence.

Thanks to the heroic work of Rigoberta Menchu, Esther Chavez, Teresa Ulloa, Lydia Cacho, the team at CIMAC and many other activists, the fact of the human slavery crisis in Mexico and the rest of Latin America cannot be denied by anyone.

These realities present a challenge to the global, and especially to the U.S. based anti-trafficking movements. Do they remain silent on this issue, or do they take appropriate action to give the crisis facing Latinas a proper seat at the table of deliberations in this movement?

The modern anti-trafficking movement was born in the 1990s in response to the enslavement of thousands of Eastern European and Russian women after the fall of the Soviet Union, and focused today principally on the issues of the enslavement of European, South Asian, East Asian and domestic minor U.S. youth. The focus areas reflect, interestingly enough, the ethnicities of the the majority of the activists in this movement.

All of those populations deserve attention. So do Latin American victims. Latin American and Asian victims were trafficked into the U.S. long before the anti-slavery sprung-up in Western nations (The risk of being sex trafficked was known in the U.S. even in the 1950s).

Yet more than ten years into the development of this movement, we have yet to hear public pronouncements about the Latin American / Latina immigrant human slavery crisis from the U.S. Federal Government, nor from the academics nor major U.S. NGO heads in the U.S. who have pioneered the effort to stop modern slavery.

During a number of major speeches on human trafficking that I have attended, virtually every region of the world will be mentioned except Latin America. Latina immigrant victims in the U.S. are almost never mentioned. Academic papers, speeches and promotional materials from the major anti-trafficking organizations are equally lacking in coverage of the crisis facing Latin America.

In late 2009, for example, I called Public Radio's nationally broadcast Diane Rehm Show based at WAMU, from American University Radio, to talk with Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporters Nicholas D. Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn (a former Times reporter), as they discussed their book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

In a reflection of the limited priorities of the majority of NGOs and U.S. federal government voices in the anti-slavery movement, Kristoff and WuDunn emphasized both in their book and during their radio interview, that their coverage of the crisis in women's rights as it exists in developing nations involved East Asia, South Asia and Africa. They did not even mention Latin America.

When I stated that Mexico is a major crisis area for human trafficking and that Save the Children had identified southern Mexico as the largest region for commercial sexual exploitation of children in the world, both authors responded by saying that, in their view, India was the largest zone for sex trafficking in the world and had to be tackled first. They admitted that they had not looked at Latin America in researching their otherwise important book on gender oppression.

In point of fact, the sex trafficking networks began to focus on Latin America in their search for large numbers of women and children to enslave as law enforcement began to crack-down on Asian sex trafficking several year ago. Latin America's crisis is, arguably, just as large as that of India, where around 1 million children are sex trafficked at any given time.

One of my main motivations for expanding the LibertadLatina project (we are now in our ninth year), was to respond to the lack of publicly available factual information on the crisis in Latin America. That information gap leaves Latin American relatively isolated and without support from the global community (with the active role of the United Nations being a welcome exception to that fact).

I recall that about 7 years ago, a young Asian American man who had just graduated from college with a major in Women's Studies, and who was then a volunteer at Polaris Project, one of the leading anti-trafficking NGOs in the U.S., told me that "Latin America doesn't have a human trafficking problem. My professors said that Latin America didn't have a problem." This guy changed his attitude after I referred him to the LibertadLatina web site.

We would hope that such ignorance was a thing of the past. But today in 2010, the U.S. based anti-slavery movement continues to discuss anti-trafficking as a crime that impacts Europeans, Asians and U.S. domestic minor victims only.

We really have to wonder what the motivations are that drive that misguided thinking.

U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca, the Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. State Department, is the U.S. Government's leading voice on human slavery issues. He is Mexican-American, and has prosecuted over 100 human trafficking cases, many involving Latin American victims and perpetrators.

In 2002 CdeBaca invited me to apply for a position as a victim advocate working with his team at the Justice Department's inter-agency Worker's Exploitation Task Force. So it is with great respect that we implore Ambassador CdeBaca to respond forcefully to the critical emergency facing women and girls in Latin America and its Diaspora in the U.S., a crisis that he is thoroughly familiar with.

We also insist that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Ambassador CdeBaca's boss, and U.S. President Barack Obama, Secretary Clinton's boss, move into action forthwith to address the defense of women and girls being exploited by the Latin American networks who prostitute enslaved Latina victims in urban brothels and rural farm worker camps in almost every county and city in America.

Ambassador CdeBaca, Secretary Clinton and President Obama, we insist that you get together and collaborate to develop a public policy and action plan to address the "60 plus percent" according to Ambassador CdeBaca, of human slavery victims in the U.S. who originated from Latin America. Funding a few NGOs across the region (some of whom are known to misuse their mandates), is not an adequate answer.

You can act to combat these problems without requiring an earthquake to kick-start you in the right direction, which is a process that we have seen of late in regard to Haiti.

We need everyone, the general public, concerned NGOs, academics and other activists to contact the White House, the U.S. State Department and their congressional members to demand immediate action in regard to the Latin American and indigenous aspects of the human slavery crisis.

Without our efforts, the crisis will continue to grow out of control, putting at risk and entire generation of young women and girls who deserve the right to live in freedom from the tyranny of the gender hostile environment that they live in today.

Write to you senators.

Write to your House of Representatives members.

Write to President Obama

U.S. Department of State 2201 C Street, NW Washington, DC 20520. Main Switchboard: 202-647-4000.

End Impunity Now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

Feb. 08, 2010

See also:

Trata de blancas en Centroamérica

Human Trafficking in Central America [and Mexico]

María de Jesús Silva [who's daughter Jackeline Jirón Silva was kidnapped into sexual slavery at age 11 - comments on her search across Central America and southern Mexico for her daughter]: "I saw things that I never imagined existed... The brothels are full of children, sold by traffickers and abandoned by their parents. I saw them prostitute them-selves and wished that any one of them would have been my daughter. I settled for caressing the hair of these girls, and I imagined that in the 'next' brothel, I was going to find my daughter. Everything that I have suffered through is nothing compared to what my girl is going through."

...According to Ana Salvadó, executive director for Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean for Save the Children: "the panorama for childhood in Latin America is growing more bleak over time, and child trafficking is growing rapidly in each of these countries..."

…Save the Children has identified the border region between Guatemala and Mexico as being the largest hot spot for the commercial sexual exploitation of children in the entire world. Ana Salvadó: "It is a bottleneck, because many children attempt to migrate from Central [and South] America to the United States, and they never get past [southern] Mexico…

…A study by the international organization ECPAT… ...reveals that over 21,000 Central Americans, mostly children, are prostituted in 1,552 bars and brothels in Tapachula, Mexico…

Traffickers sell these child victims to Tapachula's pimps for $200 each.

More that 50% of these children are from [indigenous] Guatemala. The rest are Salvadorans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans. They range in age from eight to fourteen-years-old.

...In 2006, the International Labor Organization conducted a survey of adult attitudes in Mexico, Central America and South America, where it is quite easy [for men] to engage in sexual relations with children.

Some 65% of respondents stated that they don't see any problem, and they don't feel any sort of conflict or fear in regard to having sex with boy and girl children, and "they don't feel that there is anything wrong with doing it."

...Mexico has been converted into a paradise for pimps and a living hell for thousands of Central American girl children like Jackeline Jirón Silva, whose captors have prostituted her during the past 32 months. It is known that during half of that time, Jackeline has been held in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

- Ana Lilia Pérez

Revista Contralínea

Oct. 22, 2007

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

Activists suffer imprisonment on fabricated charges to stop them from doing their work

Amnesty International

Jan. 21, 2010

See Also:

LibertadLatina

Special Section

Journalist / Activist

Lydia Cacho is

See also:

The United States

Obama's Slavery Czar

Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca fights human slavery for a living...

...Whether it was farm workers, or women in brothels, the percentages continue to be overwhelmingly Latino. Sixty-plus per cent of the [trafficking] victims in the U.S. are Hispanic.” ...

Lynn Sherr

The Daily Beast

Nov. 24, 2009

The devastation and disorder of a burglary and violent vandalism at the women’s news agency CIMAC (Women’s Communication & Information) offices in Mexico City last weekend suggest that it was more than a common break-in, according to Lucía Lagunes Huerta, general director of the organization. Manual Fuentes, a lawyer for CIMAC noted that the evidence might be “leaving a message that CIMAC is vulnerable.” On behalf of the news agency, Fuentes filed a burglary charge with the Attorney General’s office of the federal district of Mexico.

CIMAC has covered women and women’s human rights issues throughout Mexico, Central & Latin America and the world for 20 years, including special in-depth articles about various unresolved cases of femicide and sexual violence against women in Mexico as a systemic violation of women’s human rights. This journalistic work has included the hundreds of murders and disappearances of women in Juarez, Mexico; the 14 cases of sexual assault charges of women against soldiers on July 11, 2006 in Castaños in the northern state of Coahuila; and charges of sexual assault and torture of 26 women by Mexican police on May 3, 2006 in San Salvador Atenco (northeast of Mexico City), all of which remain unresolved.

Fuentes said that in the legal documents filed about the burglary against CIMAC, Erica Cervantes, a staff member declared that when they arrived the morning of Monday, July 28th they found the locks to their offices smashed and totally destroyed. Likewise, the disarray in the office was extensive and unlike typical burglaries was focused more on documents and files, including those containing confidential information about special investigations and coverage by CIMAC. Fuentes said, “it was obvious they were searching for information and documents…this is something that is very serious since CIMAC is dedicated to the denouncement and dissemination of issues that affect women in the exercise of their human rights.” ...

FIRE – Feminist International Radio Endeavour

July 30, 2008

...As Mexico and the U.S. are connected physically and through criminal links, issues the Mexican government deals with will subsequently impact the U.S. Many of the Mexican criminal networks notable for narcotrafficking are also involved in human trafficking. According to the Inter Press Service, “at least 20 networks are involved in the trafficking of persons, with links to organized crime rings involved in other activities like drug smuggling.” Rampant corruption plagues the U.S.-Mexico border, where high-ranking Mexican officials have been accused of taking bribes from drug rings. According to Gary Hale, DEA intelligence chief for Houston, the U.S. effort to end the drug war has forced these criminal networks to seek “other crime activities to generate their income.” Hale reports that, due to the U.S. government’s crackdown on drug trafficking, crime rings income has decreased significantly. As a result, many of the criminal networks have searched for other activities, like human trafficking, to supplement their income.

Ambassador C. de Baca believes that focusing on eradicating human trafficking could improve U.S.-Mexican efforts to combat other forms of transnational crime. According to C. de Baca, human trafficking “appears to be an area where the [Mexican government] is prepared to cooperate with [the U.S.].” C. de Baca and others are hopeful that the exchange of information on human trafficking cases will build relationships between Mexican and U.S. officials that might help further combat the drug war...

Megan McAdams

Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Dec. 21, 2009

United States: Migration and Trafficking in Women
A comparison study on migration and trafficking in women in the US.

Until recently, trafficking of women in the United States was rarely acknowledged. It was not until Russian and Ukrainian women began to be trafficked to the United States in the early 1990s that governmental agencies and many NGOs began to recognize the problem. As many critics, including us, have pointed out, Latin American and Asian women were trafficked into the United States for many years prior to the influx of Russian traffickers and trafficked women. The fact that it took blond and blue-eyed victims to draw governmental and public attention to trafficking in the United States gives, at least, the appearance of racism.

Patricia Hyne

Coalitio Against Trafficking in Women (CATW)

2002

Added: Feb. 08, 2010

Guatemala

At the January 31st, 2010 commemoration of the 1980 Spanish Embassy Massacre, Nobel Laureate Dr. Rigoberta Menchu Tum kneels at a tapestry covered with the names of many of those who were murdered by government forces during the Guatemalan civil conflict.

Exposición fotográfica y artística en conmemoración del 30 aniversario de la masacre de la embajada de España

El día domingo 31 de enero de 2010 diferentes organizaciones de derechos humanos de Guatemala, montaron una exposición plástica en la Plaza Mayor de la ciudad que incluyo una galería fotográfica de los acontecimientos sucedidos hace 30 años. La actividad se abrió con una conferencia de prensa presidida por la Dra. Rigoberta Menchú Tum.

Photographic and artistic exhibition in the 30 commemoration of anniversary of the massacre of the embassy of Spain

On January 31^st, 2010, human rights organizations from across Guatemala presented an art and photography exhibit to commemorate the 30^th anniversary of the Spanish Embassy Massacre in Guatemala City. The event began with a press conference by moderated by Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum.

Distinguished human rights defenders, including Aura Elena Farfan, Julio Solorzano Foppa, Miguel Ángel Alvizures participated.

Gustavo Meoño and Mario Minera related to the assembled crowd the history of the Spanish Embassy Massacre, in which 37 Mayans, students and Spanish diplomats were killed. The victims included Vicente Menchú, father of Dr. Rigoberta Menchu.

Noting that, despite the time that passed, this crime remains in impunity. The participants called on the authorities to take action, open an investigation, and punish those responsible for the murders.

The exhibition included photographs that the events of the day of the massacre, as well as the consequences of the government repression during the civil conflict. The photos of some of the [45,000] persons who were made to disappear [during the genocide] were shown.

A huge quilt with the names of victims of the armed conflict was laid in the center of the event grounds.

Guatemalan artist Marlon García displayed some of his works, and collaborated in organizing the exposition.

Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation

La Fundación Rigoberta Menchú Tum

Feb. 02, 2010

See also:

An indigenous woman in Guatemala holds a sign saying: Wanted: Jose Erain Rios Montt (the unseen part says, "for genocide") - during the 28th anniversary of the Spanish Embassy Massacre in Guatemala City, Guatemala in 2008.

General José Efraín Ríos Montt is best known outside Guatemala for heading a military regime (1982–1983) that was responsible for some of the worst atrocities against civilians in the 36-year Guatemalan civil conflict.

Photo: MiMundo

About the Spanish Embassy Massacre

Starting in 1977, a large number of Maya K’iche’ and Maya Ixil inhabitants from the municipalities of Nebaj, Chajul, San Juan Cotzal and San Miguel Uspantan, all located in the northern region of the Department of Quiche, began to organize under the newly created Committee for Peasant Union (CUC). During the year 1979, a number of oppressive acts were carried out by the army against the residents of these municipalities. [That is - military campaigns by government soldiers of mass-rapes and massacres carried out against entire villages of innocent civilians].

In response to such repression, Maya Ixil and Maya K’iche’ peasants, many of them members or local leaders within the CUC, travelled to Guatemala City so as to denounce both at national and international levels the human rights atrocities which were taking place in their communities.

Once in Guatemala City, the peasant delegation visited a number offices and personalities seeking help in divulging their accounts. But their effort was in vain. At the National Congress, access was denied to them. The press also refused to cover the story.

The delegation, however, did receive support from students at the University of San Carlos (USAC), militants from the Robin Garcia Student Revolutionary Front (FERG), some labor unions, as well as a few social organizations... In the end, they decided to occupy an Embassy.

A public declaration from the indigenous communities which peacefully occupied the Spanish Embassy, dated January 31, 1980, states: “...We have been left no other choice but to occupy the Spanish Embassy as the only resource to make our pleas known at both local and international levels.”

The military government of General Lucas Garcia decisively selected to remove the protesters “by any means”. Hence, after only a few minutes after the occupation took place, dozens of police and state security agents surrounded the Spanish Embassy grounds.

Immediately after knocking down the door, [the security forces] made use of a flamethrower, or similar gas-emitting device, against those found inside the ambassador’s office; most were struck by the flames from the waist up and propelled backwards, hence causing a pile-up effect.

Dark smoke was seen come out of the windows, and all 37 people present were burned alive.

The case of the Spanish Embassy Massacre serves as precedent and proof of the intensive and excessive political repression applied by the Government of Lucas Garcia in 1980. It clearly reflects the situation lived during such time where political opposition, demands for social justice, and the denouncement of human rights violations were completely disallowed. In addition, it also reflects the state of terror in which Guatemala society lived under at that time.

Twenty-eight years after the event, a number of activities were carried out to commemorate those massacred: a demonstration in front of the Constitutionality Court (CC), a forum focusing on the topic of Impunity, as well as a vigil in front of the current Spanish Embassy.

Spanish Embassy Massacre: 28th Anniversary

MiMundo

Feb. 27, 2008

See also:

Rigoberta Menchú in Nicaragua

On October 16, 1992, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, heir of the Maya-Quiché people of Guatemala, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee recognized in Rigoberta Menchú "a symbol of peace and reconciliation 500 years after Christopher Columbus' arrival to America," underscoring that she is a "vivid symbol of peace and reconciliation despite the ethnic, cultural and social divisions in her country, the American continent and the world."

Only a week before, Rigoberta Menchú had been in Nicaragua to attend the III Encounter of the Continental Campaign of 500 Years of Indigenous, Black and Grassroots Resistance, held in Managua from October 7-12. During her stay, she was given an honorary doctorate in Humanities from the Central American University (UCA). The UCA paid homage to her "contribution to the defense of human rights and the indigenous peoples of Latin America, particularly in her country, for more than 15 years," describing her as "a dignified and distinguished representative of the indigenous peoples of our continent."

Rigoberta Menchú's personal denunciations of the marginalization of the continent's indigenous peoples, of which she and her family have been victims, praised UCA rector Xabier Gorostiaga, have "contributed to educating international public opinion about these very serious problems." He noted that she has become "a genuine representative of the indigenous peoples and popular majorities of Central and Latin America, reclaiming the right to freedom and to the life of our cultures, principles shared by the Society of Jesus and the Central American University of Nicaragua."

Father Gorostiaga also recognized that Menchú has been a "Christian leader in her indigenous community, daughter and sister of martyrs, participating since age 10 in pastoral activities, deeply dedicated to an evangelizing mission in favor of the most oppressed and to the formation of an autochthonous church in Guatemala."

Central American University

Dec., 1992

See also:

LibertadLatina Special Section

About the genocide and femicide confronting women and girls in Guatemala

Added: Feb. 08, 2010

Florida, USA

Advocates Hope to Rescue Underage Super Bowl Sex Slaves

Super Bowl XLIV

Two dozen volunteers from around the country gathered inside a Miami conference room earlier this week to prepare for the Super Bowl.

They're not here for the game, though. They will spend several days fanning out through the city to rescue underage girls who have been trafficked to South Florida as sex workers.

``The Super Bowl is obviously a really big deal for prostitution,'' Sandy Skelaney, a program manager at Kristi House, a program for sexually abused children, told the group.

``We have a bunch of girls being brought down by pimps.''

Just as police, hoteliers, restaurateurs and retailers have prepared for the big game, so too have children's advocates. For weeks, volunteers have printed fliers, prepared scripts and organized outreach teams in an effort to identify -- and, with luck, rescue -- girls who are being forced into prostitution.

Last year, when the Super Bowl was held in Tampa, the state Department of Children & Families took in 24 children who were brought to the city to serve as sex workers, said Regina Bernadin, DCF's statewide human-trafficking coordinator.

``Miami is known as a destination city for human trafficking, and sporting events are generally recognized by the experts as magnets for prostitution,'' said Trudy Novicki, who heads Kristi House...

Throughout the year, Miami-Dade police hold between 15 and 20 operations targeting underage prostitution. For major events, such as the Super Bowl, the department works with the FBI's Innocence Lost Task Force.

``At large events such as this, we increase our presence . . . with the ultimate goal being that no children are sexually exploited,'' Maj. Raul Ubieta, who works with the department's Strategic and Specialized Investigations Bureau, said through a spokesman...

The outreach workers are organized into eight teams, divvying up the Spanish-speakers and trying to have one man each. In teams of two, three or four, the volunteers -- who came from as far as New York City and Alabama -- spread out across Miami-Dade -- from South Beach to Hialeah to Downtown Miami....

Marbin Miller And Jennifer Lebovich

The Miami Herald

Feb. 5, 2010

Added: Feb. 08, 2010

North Carolina, USA

Human-Trafficking Ring Busted in Wilson

Wilson County Sheriff Wayne Gay says that investigators arrested a man Thursday for allegedly running a prostitution ring with ties to human trafficking, according to media reports.

WITN News reports that Felipe Ramirez Chavez faces a misdemeanor charge of maintaining a place for prostitution. Chavez was being held in the Wayne County Jail Saturday under a $1,000 bond and has also been placed placed under a detainer by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Gay told WITN that a few weeks ago, acting on tips about a prostitution ring, deputies raided a house on U.S. Highway 301 and found one woman. Information from that raid led them to arrest Chavez at his residence at 2101 Fair Place in Wilson.

Two women were found at Chavez's residence, but investigators believe that three or four women lived there, Gay said.

The sheriff said he believes this prostitution ring is unique in the county.

Chavez's first court appearance was set for March 5.

WRAL

Feb. 6, 2010

Added: Feb. 06, 2010

Missouri, USA

Flor, 37, talks about her experience as a labor trafficking victim: "I thought slaves were only in the past, just in history. It happens every day."

From: A New Slavery: Border Crossing - Photo Gallery - The Kansas City Star

Photo: Keith Myers / Kansas City Star

Kansas City Star’s Human Trafficking Series Wins Award in Kansas

The Kansas City Star’s series on human trafficking in America has won the 2009 Burton W. Marvin Kansas News Enterprise Award.

The award was presented Friday to reporters Laura Bauer, Mike McGraw and Mark Morris during the annual William Allen White Day festivities on the University of Kansas campus.

“We are again happy to honor quality journalism in Kansas,” said Ann Brill, dean of KU’s journalism school. “The winners this year represent the impact that great storytelling can have in a community.”

The five-part series, published in December, found that the U.S. government is failing to find and help thousands of human trafficking victims. According to the judges, the series reflected a “commitment to serving the public and demonstrated initiative on acting on that commitment.”

The Kansas City Star

Feb. 05, 2010

The Kansas City Star

Dec., 2009

See also:

LibertadLatina Note

We would like to applaud the Kansas City Star for their December, 2009 special series of articles on human trafficking. Their work was one of the few mainstream English language print articles in recent years that focused on the fact that Mexico, Guatemala and other regions of Latin America confront a major sex and labor trafficking crisis. They also highlighted the fact that Latin Americans comprise the majority of human trafficking victims in the United States.

End Impunity Now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

Feb. 06/07, 2010

Added: Feb. 06, 2010

Haiti

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton in Haiti

Photo: Reuters

Clinton Urges Solution to Haiti 'Kidnap' Case

Port-au-Prince - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton urged the U.S. and Haitian governments on Friday to resolve the case of 10 American missionaries accused of trying to take children illegally out of quake-hit Haiti.

Clinton, named by the United Nations to coordinate relief efforts for survivors of the devastating Jan. 12 quake, made the appeal during a visit to the shattered Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, his second since last month's disaster.

The accused U.S. missionaries, most of whom belong to an Idaho-based Baptist church, were arrested a week ago and charged on Thursday with child kidnapping and criminal association.

Haitian authorities say the group tried to take a busload of 33 Haitian children across the border into the Dominican Republic without any papers proving the minors were orphans or any official permission to take them out of the country.

The missionaries deny any intentional wrongdoing and say they were only trying to help children left destitute by the Jan. 12 earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people, injured some 300,000 and left over a million more homeless.

The Americans' case is diplomatically sensitive and aid groups complain it has distracted media and world attention away from the struggle to feed and shelter hundreds of thousands of Haitians camped out in wrecked streets.

"What's important now is for the government of Haiti and the government of the United States to get together and work through this," Clinton told CNN in Port-au-Prince.

He said he understood the Haitian government's efforts to try to protect its children from possible child traffickers and unlawful adoptions following the catastrophic quake.

But he also said the missionaries could be telling the truth when they argued they simply wanted to help the children and did not mean to violate any laws. Evidence has emerged that many of the intercepted children were not orphans but were given up by parents who wanted them to have a better life [Note that the missionaries at-first stated to the press that all of the children were orphans - LL].

"The government of Haiti ... (is) not looking for some big fight here. They just want to protect their children and they also want to make sure they have a good inventory so they don't send children away that maybe have an aunt or an uncle that have an income," Clinton said...

Reuters

Feb. 5, 2010

Added: Feb. 06, 2010

Texas, USA

Deputies Investigating Alleged Abduction, Sex Assault

Houston -- A nine-year-old girl was approached and nearly abducted at an apartment complex in southwest Houston Saturday. Her family is thankful she's safe, but police haven't found the man who investigators say tried to lure her away.

The Precinct 5 Constables Office was called out to the University Apartments on Beechnut near Fondren at around 2pm. When they arrived, they found the shaken nine-year-old girl. She told authorities the man lured her to the back of the apartment complex by asking her to help him find his cat.

When he got back there, authorities say the man made a sexual advance on the girl and tried to get her into his truck.

Fortunately, she managed to escape and ran and reported the incident. Neighbors meantime, are mad.

"What I think about it is that if I see him, you won't have to worry about him," said neighbor Joe York. "You'll never have to worry about him again."

"It's kind of worries me because you know it can happen to anybody," said neighbor Erik Benitez. "Just like it happened to a little kid, it could happen to any grownup."

The suspect is described as an Hispanic man between 35 and 40 years old. He was last seen driving a blue Toyota truck. Deputy constables, as well as Houston police officers, searched the neighborhood Saturday afternoon, but he was not located.

We are told HPD's juvenile sex crimes unit has been notified. Anyone with information is encouraged to call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.

KTRK

Jan. 24, 2010

Added: Feb. 06, 2010

Florida, USA

Composite image of suspect

Deputies Investigating Alleged Abduction, Sex Assault

The Charlotte County Sheriff's Office is asking for help with their investigation of reported abduction and sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl in the area of Palmetto Circle in Port Charlotte.

Deputies took the call about the alleged abduction shortly after 9:30 p.m. Thursday. The girl said she was walking by herself and that two men forced her into their car.

The girl says both of the men were in their mid twenties.

She said one of the men was Hispanic and described him as tall and skinny with black spiky hair and wearing a red shirt.

She told deputies the other man was white and wore glasses. The girl described that man as tall and thin, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans.

She said both suspects speak English with a Spanish accent.

The vehicle is an older white 4-door car, with dark tinted windows, and a reflective stripe down the side.

If anyone has information about this case, please call Detective Ian Alvarez at (941) 575-5361 or Crime Stoppers at 800-780-TIPS.

WBBH

Feb 05, 2010

Added: Feb. 05, 2010

Georgia, USA

Thomas E. Perez
Assistant Attorney - General - Civil Rights Division - U.S. Department of Justice: "...Human trafficking will not be tolerated in the United States..."

Citizen of Mexico Sentenced for Role in Federal Sex Trafficking Conspiracy

Atlanta - Miguel Rugerio, 28, a Mexican national, was sentenced to federal prison today by United States District Judge Clarence Cooper on charges of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and related immigration offenses, and of transporting one of the victims of the conspiracy, a young Mexican woman identified as “N.M.,” in interstate and foreign commerce for purposes of prostitution.

Acting United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said of today’s sentencing, “This defendant lured young women from Mexico with the promise of money and legitimate jobs and then forced them into prostitution and repulsive living conditions. He is now going to federal prison for five years and then will be expelled from the United States.”

In Washington, D.C., Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, said, “This defendant deprived vulnerable victims of their freedom, their dignity and their civil rights. Today’s sentencing should send a clear message to would-be perpetrators that human trafficking will not be tolerated in the United States.”

“Few crimes are more repugnant than sex trafficking helpless and innocent victims,” said Kenneth Smith, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs (ICE) Enforcement Office of Investigations in Atlanta.

“This sentencing is gratifying given the horrible conditions the victims in this case were forced to endure. While we can’t erase the suffering these women experienced, by aggressively investigating and prosecuting these cases, ICE and its law enforcement partners are sending a powerful warning about the consequences facing those responsible for such schemes.”

FBI Atlanta Special Agent in Charge Greg Jones said, “Today’s sentencing of Mr. Rugerio provides further opportunities for law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, as well as the many and varied victim assistance based agencies, to highlight the growing crime problem known as human trafficking. Mr. Rugerio will now have five years in federal prison to consider the exploitation and victimization of those that he brought in to the U.S. under false pretenses for purposes of prostitution.”

Chicago Press Release

Feb. 04, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

The United States, The World, Haiti

U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca, the Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. State Department, speaks at the Preview to the Annual Meeting of the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons

Preview to the Annual Meeting of the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons

Ambassador Luis CdeBaca: …I’m the Ambassador-at-Large for the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking. Today, Secretary Clinton will chair the President’s interagency task force. She’ll be joined by other members of the task force, including the Attorney General, the secretaries of Labor, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services; the USAID Administrator, the Director of National Intelligence, as well as representatives from the White House, Department of Defense, Education, Agriculture, and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

This meeting, which… is mandated under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, is the first held under the Obama Administration. In today’s meeting, we will look forward to a very candid and progressive discussion that highlights the work that each agency is conducting individually as well as collectively to combat modern slavery. In addition, it’s a chance to preview the anti-trafficking efforts in the days, weeks, and months ahead as we work together to make measured progress against every form of exploitation, including forced labor, peonage, and sexual servitude, in response to the President’s declaration of January as Human Trafficking and Slavery Awareness and Prevention Month.

[In regard to child trafficking in Haiti:]

Ambassador CdeBaca: We have begun to – we’ve actually got funding out the door already to a group called Heartland Alliance that’s part of the child cluster that’s one of the more experienced U.S. counter-trafficking organizations. They work with a lot of the trafficking victims in the Midwest. They’re out of Chicago. But they also do counter-trafficking projects for – with grant money from us around the world. And they’re stepping up their activities in Haiti…

Ambassador CdeBaca: …There’s been reports, that I think have been reported on in the news as well, of men coming into some of the camps, using offers of food or water to get girls to leave with them in trucks. Now, obviously, we don’t have any hard evidence as to what’s happening to those girls once they leave with those men, and so that’s why the term “the notion of” trafficking…

What we’ve done in the last three weeks is we’ve repositioned a number of those projects. In the Dominican Republic, for instance, we’re working with the Solidarity Center so that we can try to turn that project around a little bit and have it catch, if there are folks that are coming over the border in search of jobs, in search of work, that they know their rights, that they know that they shouldn’t put themselves into a situation where they can be exploited.

So we’re working on the Dominican side with that project, and then we’re also moving money into Haiti as far as trying to build up those child protection brigades, as far as working with the groups such as the Jean Robert Cadet Restavek Foundation and others to try to make sure that we can have some things in place to protect those children.

Question: You asking for more money for Haiti? You said that previously you had about $500,000 a year in projects. And I know you guys have – don’t have yet an exact sum for assistance for Haiti. But do you plan to ask for additional money to combat these kinds of – to combat trafficking in Haiti?

Ambassador CdeBaca: Well, we have 500,000 to begin with. We will reposition about another a million, taking that from other projects, frankly. And so we need to look at how we make sure that those projects, which – the money of which hasn’t gone out the door yet. And those countries don’t necessarily (inaudible) or not, now that we’re looking at the Haitian side.

Obviously, we’re looking at what the long-term funding needs are. We have about $20-, $22 million in grant funds that we administer in the Trafficking office. We work with our partners at USAID and at the International Labor Affairs Bureau over at DOL, and we are shaking the trees right now to figure out what money there is in this year’s budget, as opposed to looking into the next year...

[The linked web page contains a video recording of this presentation.]

Luis CdeBaca

Director, Office To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons

U.S. Department of State

Feb. 3, 2010

The Obama administration is weeks away from announcing a new surge — this one aimed at escalating the war on human trafficking in America.

“In January we are going to be announcing a major set of initiatives,” Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told The Kansas City Star.

Napolitano disclosed the administration’s plans at the conclusion of The Star’s six-month investigation exposing numerous failures in America’s anti-trafficking battle.

Although details of the plan were not released, advocates and other experts said they’re cautiously optimistic that this is the best chance in years to address many of the problems revealed in the newspaper’s five-part series. They’re also hopeful that the administration, which has reached out to them and asked what changes are needed, will correct structural flaws in the broken system.

“It is time to go back to the drawing board and promote a more seamless, coordinated plan,” said Florrie Burke, a nationally known advocate for trafficking victims.

Other experts said it’s also time for congressional oversight hearings on the flagging decade-long struggle, and time to centralize an anti-trafficking effort that is thinly spread across a vast bureaucracy plagued by inter-agency wrangling and a lack of coordination.

Part of: Human Trafficking in America | A Star series

Mark Morris, Mike Mcgraw And Laura Bauer

The Kansas City

Dec. 15, 2009

See also:

LibertadLatina Commentary

Chuck Goolsby

We note for the record that the Obama Administration indicated in December of 2009 that they would be presenting a major new initiative to combat human trafficking during January of 2010. As of February 3rd, 2010, that announcement had not yet happened.

It is not hard to understand that an escalation in attempts at terrorism within the U.S., as well as the Haitian earthquake emergency are likely to be among the factors that have pushed back such an announcement. It is concerning, though, that we see no sign in the February 3, 2010 news conference comments of Luis CdeBaca, Director of the U.S. State Department's Office To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, that the Obama Administration is on the verge of rolling-out any such effort.

We hope that, whenever this action is taken (and even if it never comes about), the Obama Administration recognizes that, as Ambassador CdeBaca stated in a December, 2009 press interview with the Kansas City Star, some 60% of trafficking victims within the U.S. are from Latin America, and a great many victims are trafficked across the Mexican / U.S. border.

Currently, the attention to Haiti's emergency is very much in order. We note that the world press has sounded the alarm bell about the risk of child sex trafficking in the wake of the Haitian earthquake like never before.

While the press, assisting governments and NGO organizations work through the ongoing crisis in Haiti, we ask the world to also remember that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of children and young women face an equally urgent risk of kidnapping, rape and sex trafficking across Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet neither the U.S. federal government nor the NGO community nor most major news entities in the English speaking world have strongly acknowledged, nor have they reacted effectively to that harsh reality.

We hope that the press and the NGOs who get invited to attend events such as the February 3rd Preview to the Annual Meeting of the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons dare to ask the hard questions, as some reporters at the event asked in regard to Haiti (see the linked event transcript).

The same questions need to be asked about U.S. government policy and action in defense of human trafficking and exploitation victims across the Americas, and indeed the world.

We are most concerned at this time about the deafening silence in regard to Latin America's enormous problems with human exploitation and slavery. That silence has existed not only during President Obama's term, but it also occurred during the administration of President George W. Bush.

When prominent academics, government leaders and press writers and authors speak publicly about human trafficking, the focus is invariably on the crisis in Europe, Asia, and to a lesser extent Africa and domestic minor sex trafficking victims in the U.S. All of these communities deserve, and have gotten attention.

Those who have not gotten attention are the women and children of Latin America and the Caribbean where, as leading anti-trafficking activist Teresa Ulloa, director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) for Latin America and the Caribbean (CATW-LAC) notes, an estimated 50 million women and children are at-risk of falling into the hands of human traffickers. As Ulloa further states, some 5 million victims exist in Mexico alone.

Given that 60% of the trafficking victims in the U.S. are Latin Americans, where is the U.S. government's attention to their crisis?

'Little Brown Maria Trapped in the Brothel' deserves our help now!

Ignoring the issue allows the drug cartel financed mega-traffickers to laugh all the way to the bank, because they know that at least today, Uncle Sam is not even thinking about coming after them. Nor, apparently, is Uncle Sam planning to defend and rescue 'Maria' anytime soon.

We insist upon a change to that way of thinking. Does the fact that poor indigenous and African descendent victims in Mexico and the Dominican Republic are people of color really mean that CNN, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and anti-trafficking NGOs who receive federal funds can't ring the alarm bell and help put out the fire, and must continually ignore this raging emergency?

We insist, among dozens of other items on our to-do list, that the U.S. Government demand that Mexico and Japan ACT NOW to rescue and restore the estimated 3,000 to 4,000 indigenous children who have been kidnapped with impunity by the Japanese Yakuza mafias and taken to Japan to be sold as 'geishas' in sexual slavery.

Giving attention to Haiti is a good start. Of course, hundreds of thousands of trafficked children existed in Haiti before the earthquake.

Where was the press then?

Writing from the middle of an anti-trafficking movement that is maturing... but slowly!

End Impunity Now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

Feb. 04/05, 2010

See also:

The United States

Obama's Slavery Czar

Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca fights human slavery for a living...

...Whether it was farm workers, or women in brothels, the percentages continue to be overwhelmingly Latino. Sixty-plus per cent of the [trafficking] victims in the U.S. are Hispanic.” ...

Lynn Sherr

The Daily Beast

Nov. 24, 2009

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Haiti

Haitian music star Wycelf Jean

Wycelf Jean Reacts To Human Trafficking Arrests In Haiti

In light of the tragedy in Haiti, a new problem is rising in the capital of Port Au Prince, human trafficking.

Ten Americans were arrested Sunday on charges of human trafficking after Haitian officials say they tried to take 33 Haitian children ranging in age from 2 months to 12 years to the Dominican Republic without proper documentation and permission.

Now outraged about the turmoil racking his country, Wyclef Jean released a series of angry tweets denouncing the traffickers saying, “My message to the child traffickers n Haiti I give you my word we will hunt you Down one by one, and you will be judge[d] with no Mercy!”

The civilians accused of trafficking are part of a Baptist church in the U.S. and maintain that they were trying to save abandoned and orphaned children and planned to relocate them to safety.

They are being held at a government building until officials determine if they should go before a judge.

Haiti's government has halted all adoptions for the time being unless the adoption plans were set in motion before the quake.

Danielle Canada

HipHipWired.com

Feb. 1, 2010

Hip-hop star Wyclef Jean was forced to deal with another tragedy while helping desperate survivors of the Haiti earthquake, after a volunteer for his Yele Haiti foundation was shot dead in a car-jacking.

The former Fugees star and native Haitian rushed to his homeland when the massive tremor hit the nation earlier this month, ravaging the poor country's infrastructure and killing more than 150,000 people.

But Jean and his team of volunteers had to contend with more than just the devastation left by the earthquake, they witnessed the desperate lengths Haiti's people were going to in a bid to survive - which ended in terrible consequences for one young helper.

He explains, "Jo Jo was shot and killed on the second day we were there. He was the victim of a car-jacking. I left him alone for two hours and he was driving in the city.

"A guy stopped him and told him to get out of the car. No one knows quite what happened next but he was shot twice and killed instantly. The jacker didn't even want the car, he just wanted to take the fuel."

And Jean is adamant he will never be able to forget the horrific scenes he witnessed.

He says, "It looked like the apocalypse - there were bodies everywhere. It's a sight that will stay with me for ever. It's something you just can't put into words. I filmed everything with a video camera because I was convinced people would not believe what we told them."

www.StarPulse.com

Jan. 31st, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Haiti, Puerto Rico

Ricky Martin arrives at the 52nd Annual GRAMMY Awards held at Staples Center on January 31, 2010 in Los Angeles, California.

Photo: Larry Busacca, Getty Images for NARAS

Ricky Martin Has Haiti on His Mind
Amid the glamour of the red carpet, Ricky Martin's mind was on Haiti.
The singer, who has been campaigning against human trafficking for several years, just returned from the island.
"Situations like this, unfortunately, people take advantage and they start traffic human beings," he said. "It's very intense down there, kids crying in the street, corpses everywhere. It's going to take a while for things to get back to normal."
Martin plans to start working with Habitat for Humanity to start rebuilding homes in Haiti.

Marco R. della Cava

USA Today

Jan. 31, 2010

See also:

The Ricky Martin Foundation

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Missouri and Kansas, USA

Two Agencies Won't Seek Federal Funds in an Effort Against Human Trafficking

Two local agencies - the Independence Police Department and Hope House - received three-year Justice Department grants in 2006 but will not reapply, officials said. The grants expired at the end of last year.

It is unknown whether other local agencies will apply for grants, according to Justice Department officials. New grants will be given later this year.

Independence police didn’t reapply because detectives must focus on other crimes, said Maj. Ken Jarnigan. Two detectives assigned to human trafficking are now fighting cyber crimes, he said.

“It was a juggling act; which priority do we focus on?” Jarnigan said. “We felt like our department and citizens would be better served by them doing cyber crimes rather than human trafficking. In a perfect world we would have tried to do both.”

Hope House CEO Mary Anne Metheny said in a statement that the shelter would continue to provide services for victims eligible for existing programs.

“However, we will no longer offer human trafficking training or facilitate the coalition against human trafficking,” Metheny said.

The Kansas City Star reported in December that the U.S. attorney’s office had stopped referring human trafficking victims to Hope House after the shelter reportedly failed to fulfill some of its obligations under the grant.

Although trafficking is considered a coastal phenomenon, more alleged traffickers — 36 in the past three years — have been prosecuted by federal authorities in western Missouri than anywhere else in the nation. One Kansas City case, involving Giant Labor Solutions, is thought to be the largest labor trafficking ring uncovered in U.S. history.

But the absence of federal money for the human trafficking task force won’t change what local authorities are doing, said U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips.

“The task force is still fully functioning,” Phillips said. “It’s still meeting and investigating and prosecuting cases. Human trafficking investigations remain a priority of our office.”

Laura Bauer and Mike McGraw

The Kansas City Star

Feb. 02, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Haiti

Bandas de Violadores Aterran a las Haitianas

Bands of Rapists Terrorize Haitian Women

Los criminales recorren como alimañas los campamentos de desplazados para elegir a sus víctimas. La policía se confiesa incapaz de proteger a las mujeres.

When night falls, criminal men with lanterns roam the refugee camps in search of their victims. The police confess that they cannot protect all women...

www.publico.es

Feb. 03, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Haiti

Aumenta a un Millón la Cifra de Niños Huérfanos

Earthquake Pushes Number of Haitian Orphans to 1 Million

El número de niños huérfanos tras el terremoto que devastó Haití se ha duplicado y alcanza actualmente el millón de afectados, según un informe de la Comisión Europea.

El Universal

Mexico City

Feb. 03, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Haiti, The Dominican Republic

Haitiana Recupera Hijo Robado en Cabo Haitiano y Vendido en Dominicana

Haitian Woman Recovers Her Child, Kidnapped in Cape Haitien. Child had been sold in the Dominican Republic

Tras ser secuestrados en Haití, muchos menores son vendidos para luego ser explotados en las calles de República Dominicana, como pedigueños o en actividades de prostitución, como fuera el caso del hijo de Cariné Oguí Pié, quien recuperó en esta ciudad, al norte de Dominicana, a su hijo de siete años, que fuera robado en Cabo Haitiano y trasladado, vendido y obligado a trabajar en las calles santiagueras como mendigo.

La Nacion Dominicana

Feb. 03, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Haiti

Niños Haitianos Pululan por las Calles

Haitian Children Mass in the Streets

La procuradora del Tribunal de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes de Santiago, Antia Beato, estimó ayer necesario que instituciones públicas y privadas realicen esfuerzos conjuntos para resolver el drama que representa la cantidad de menores de origen haitiano que pernocta en las calles de esta ciudad, al ser traficados desde su país.

www.listindiario.com.do

Feb. 03, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Haiti

Miles de Haitianas, Sin Servicios Salud y Con Mayor Riesgo de Violencia Sexual

Thousands of Haitian Women Lack Health Services and Risk Sexual Violence

Miles de haitianas no pueden acceder ni a los servicios de salud reproductiva ni a sus métodos habituales de planificación familiar y afrontan un mayor riesgo de violencia y de explotación sexual.

EFE

Feb. 02, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Indonesia

Red de Prostitución Infantil que Operaba por Facebook fue Desmantelada

A Prostitution Network Selling 15- and 16-year-old Girls, Operating on FaceBook, is Taken Down by the Police in Jakarta.

La Policía de Indonesia arrestó a dos supuestos proxenetas que administraban la organización.

EFE

Feb. 03, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Spain

Las Niñas Agredidas en el Bus Escolar, Invitadas a Irse de su Instituto

Two 12-year-old Girls Sexually Assaulted on School Bus are Invited to Leave their School

Una ya ha sido trasladada a un centro concertado. La otra víctima de la agresión no puede pagarlo y convive a diario con cuatro de sus agresores.

www.20Minutos.es

Feb. 03, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Spain

Una Madre se Enfrenta a 30 Años por Prostituir a Sus Hijas, Menores de Edad

A Mother Faces 30 Years in Prison for Exhibitionism and for Prostituting Her Underage Daughters

El padre también se sentará en el banquillo por mantener supuestamente relaciones sexuales delante de las pequeñas

www.diariodesevilla.es

Feb. 03, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Brazil

Campaña Contra la Explotación Sexual Será Lanzada en Rio de Janeiro, el 8

Rio de Janeiro Will Start a New Campaign Against Sexual Exploitation February 8th

Con el slogan "Explotación Sexual de Niñas/os y Adolescentes es Crimen.

www.adital.com.br/s

Feb. 03, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Bolivia

Víctimas de Abuso Sexual en Hogar Vida ya Son 42

Forty Two Victims of Sexual Abuse Have Been Discovered in an Orphanage Run by Evangelical Christians in the town of Sipe Sipe

El personal sabía desde hace tres años que los mayores violaban a los más pequeños

Staff remained silent for at least the past three years while knowing that children between the ages of 4 and 13 were were being raped at the Life Center.

www.lostiempos.com

Feb. 03, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Texas, USA

Benito Vargas

Fugitive Finder: Sex Trafficking Suspect

Benito Vargas has a history of human trafficking and is currently wanted on Suspicion of Aggravated Sexual Assault of a Child.

Investigators said he found his latest victim in Jalisco, Mexico, and his mother and sister both participated in abusing the girl.

On October 27, 2009, while in Jalisco, Vargas persuaded a 16-year-old girl to leave her home and return with him to his home 210 W. 10th Street in San Juan.

Vargas took the girl to Matamoros and arranged for her to be smuggled into the United States.

Upon arriving at the San Juan [Texas] home, investigators said Vargas repeatedly assaulted, verbally abused and raped the girl.

The teen was forced to wake up at 5 a.m., bathe three children who lived in the house with Vargas' mother and sister, and walk the children to a nearby school.

The girl was also expected to complete daily chores including preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Investigators said the teen tried to defend herself and received countless threats that she would be killed or arrested for being in the U.S. illegally.

On December 13, 2009, the girl was kicked out of the house.

With no relatives, friends or anywhere to go, she sat by the curb in front of the house for two days and did not eat.

At night, she would sneak onto the property and sleep on an old sofa in the front yard.

Police believe Vargas is in Mexico along the U.S./Mexico border.

Vargas is described as a 23-year-old Hispanic male with brown eyes and black hair.

He is 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighs 180 pounds.

Vargas also goes by the name Benito Cordero-Vargas.

Call the San Juan Crime Stoppers line at (956) 283-TIPS if you know how to find him.

Benito's mother, Ofelia Vargas, has been arrested for not reporting the abuse.

Benito's sister, Belen Vargas, was already in custody on unrelated charges and is now facing assault charges.

ValleyCentral.com

Feb. 01, 2010

Added: Feb. 04, 2010

Texas, USA

ICE: Houston a Hub for Human Trafficking

HOUSTON -- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have conducted what they call an "unprecedented" criminal investigation into Houston transport businesses suspected of illegally smuggling people into the county.

On Tuesday, 22 people were arrested and charged with using their businesses to transport recently smuggled aliens. Eighty-one illegal immigrants were also arrested and have been placed in removal proceedings.

The three-month investigation dubbed "Night Moves" targeted both transport businesses suspected of housing immigrants, as well as the individual drivers who move them. ICE agents say Houston has become a growing hub for human trafficking. In one location, immigrants were guarded with weapons, pit bulls and surveillance cameras.

In addition to the arrests, ICE agents also seized 32 vehicles, 18 weapons, and $45,000 cash.

Katherine Whaley

Feb. 3, 2010

Added: Jan. 31, 2010

Haiti

A girl stands inside an open air market in Port-au-Prince.

Photo: Reuters / Shannon Stapleton

Haitian Women Lose Out In Post-Quake "Survival Of The Strongest"

In one of the camps sheltering the homeless in Haiti's earthquake-stricken capital, a group of male volunteers stands guard over hundreds of teenage girls and young women as they sleep during the night.

The women there are so afraid of being attacked that they have organized the protection themselves, according to ActionAid, which says several women have already reported cases of rape or sexual abuse to their staff in the camp.

Elsewhere in Port-au-Prince, women have left food lines empty-handed after groups of men raided food distribution sites watched by police who were too few and too powerless to stop them...

Aid workers and human rights activists are increasingly worried that in a country where women's rights are routinely trampled upon or ignored,

Femicide in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

Mexico Solidarity Network Organizes October, 2005 Campaign & Tour Against Femicide in Juarez and Injustice in Exploitive Low Wage Border Factories (Maquilladoras).

July 7, 2005

Twelve Men Repeatedly Raped a 17-Year-Old Girl Who They 'Purchased' from a Troupe that Lures Girls In with Promises of Training for a Modeling Career.

The Criminal Gang , Which Allegedly Included a Former Ciudad Juarez Police Officer, Paid the Victim to Attend Modeling Classes.The Victim Was with the Gang When a Man Emerged from a Luxury SUV and Paid US $10,000 to Take Her Away.

June 7, 2005

Relatives of Murder Victims Disappointed in New Prosecutor, Storm Out of Meeting.

New Prosecutor Assigned to Killings of Women in Ciudad Juarez Emphasizes Prevention.

Added May 2, 2005

WITNESS and the Mexican Government's Human Rights Commission Present New Bilingual Online Video On the Juarez, Mexico Femicide.

Added May 2, 2005

Amnesty International:

Stop Violence Against Women in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua, México

The Criminal Gang , Which Allegedly Included a Former Ciudad Juarez Police Officer, Paid the Victim to Attend Modeling Classes.

The Victim Was with the Gang When a Man Emerged from a Luxury SUV and Paid US $10,000 to Take Her Away.