July
2007
News
Added July 27, 2007
Central America and
Mexico
Women Migrants from Central America Suffer Sexual
Abuse in Their Journey To The United States
Mujeres migrantes de
Centroamérica sufren abuso sexual
La Antigua –
Studies carried out in southern Mexico reveal that
70% of migrants experience violence during their
travels. Sixty percent of migrants suffer sexual
violence during their journey, ranging from acts of
coercion to rape.
These
statistics were published in 2006 by Guatemalan
feminist and sociologist Ana Silvia Monzón in her
book The Invisible Travelers: Women Migrants in the
Central American and Mexican Region...
...Many women [and children] find it necessary to
engage in prostitution on a temporary or permanent
basis [to survive]. Women engage in sex work in
conditions of extreme risk to their physical
security and health...
During the year 2004
some 400 women were murdered in the [southern Mexican border] region, which is 10 times the rate
of murders in femicide burdened
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
- CIMAC Noticias
News for Women
Mexico City
07-26-2007
Added July 26, 2007
Native America
Fired
Nevada U.S. attorney had doubled prosecution rate in
cases affecting Native Americans
After 11 years as
an assistant U.S. attorney in Reno, where most of
the cases from federal crimes on Nevada's 27 Indian
reservations were handled and where he had
prosecuted many of them, Daniel Bogden became the
U.S. attorney for Nevada and made American Indian
issues a priority...
Then in late 2006, the
Justice Department abruptly fired eight U.S.
attorneys. Bogden was one of five among the eight
who had taken a leadership role on DOJ's
sub-committee on Native issues...
Arlan Melendez, vice
president of the Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada:
''When you see the Justice Department isn't really
interested in Indian country, and then you see them
fire U.S. attorneys who are taking an interest in
Indian country, you formulate your opinions from
that.''
- Indian Country Today
July 20, 2007
Added July 26, 2007
Wyoming, USA
Un hombre que
tuvo relaciones sexuales con una muchacha de 13 años
que había sido obligada a prostituirse ha sido
sentenciado hasta 15 años de prisión.
- The Associated Press
July 23, 2007
Juan Luna, age 37
has been sentenced to nine to 15 years in prison for
having sex with a 13-year-old girl. The girl was
prostituted by three men who told her she had to
repay a debt for bringing her to the United States.
The
girl’s three captors were sentenced in federal court
in January [2007] to sex trafficking of a child...
Jose
Luis Chavez, 42, received 97 months. Jacobo
Dominguez Vazquez, 33, received 30 months. Braulio
Anceto Valez, 21, received 16 months in prison.
Deputy
prosecuting attorney Brian Hultman: “[Juan Luna]
created the market and the demand for people like
[Jose Luis] Chavez to provide him the opportunity to
sexually abuse a minor just six weeks past her
thirteenth birthday.”
-
Amanda H.
Miller
Jackson
Hole News
Wyoming
July 21, 2007
Added July 23, 2007
Native Guatemala
Child Kidnapping is a Sinister
Practice
Robo de
niños,práctica tenebrosa
San Jose – The kidnapping of children in Guatemala
has become linked to an explosive combination of
organized crime activity that includes everything
from drug trafficking, adoptions, human trafficking,
child pornography and the commercial sexual
exploitation of children (CSEC), to the trade in
stolen vehicles from the U.S. and the theft of
petroleum tankers.
“...The
kidnapping of children is a sinister practice,” said Nidia Aguilar,
Child Rights Defender at PDH. We have three cases of newborns that were
kidnapped and later appeared in child pornography videos.
- Jose Meléndez
El Universal
Mexico City
07-22-2007
Added July 19, 2007
Native Colombia
Indigenous leader Karmen Ramirez receives death
threats from right-wing paramilitaries as
retaliation for her human rights activism
Líder indígena Karmen Ramírez amenazada
por paramilitares
Indigenous leader
Karmen Ramirez Boscán, who’s native name is
Wayunkerra, is a member of the Epinayu clan of the
Wayúu tribe. She has recently been subjected to a
wave of death threats from [a] right-wing
paramilitary guerrilla army... in retaliation for
[her] activism as a tribal leader...
Wayunkerra recently announced that paramilitary
commanders closely tracked her [recent] visit to New York
City and her [native advocacy] activities at the
United nations, and said that these commanders have
planned to conduct a wave of assass-inations of
Wayúu leaders, including of a number of members of
the Boscán family, in retaliation.
…In addition to Wayunkerra, Wayúu Women’s Movement
leaders Mydoll Arredondo and Leonor Avilorio have
also received threats.
- CIMAC Noticias
News for Women
Mexico City
07-06-2007
See also:
Wayuu children
and adults raped, tortured and massacred by
paramilitaries.
- Weekly News Update on
the Americas
04-18-2004
LibertadLatina
About the crisis in Columbia
Added July 14, 2007
Native America
U.S. Justice
Department turns its back on rape with impunity on
Native reservations
U.S. Attorney
firings targeted effective prosecutors of rape on
the reservation
Impact of 2006 Adam
Walsh Act on tribes also discussed
Crime-victim
advocates from Indian country have focused attention
on the pandemic of rape on Indian lands by whites
and other perpetrators. One in three Indian women
will be raped, and more than 70 percent of the
rapists are not Indian.
At the National Congress of American Indians'
mid-year conference in June [2007], Native women who
have worked for decades to end sexual violence on
Indian lands [discussed] the need for tribal
follow-up on the Adam Walsh Act and other subjects.
The meeting was attended by Margaret Chiara, who was
one of the eight U.S. Attorneys fired by the Bush
administration. Of those eight, she was one of the
five who served on the U.S. Attorneys' subcommittee
for Native issues.
Chiara said her office had increased prosecutions of
these kinds of violent crimes and others on the
reservations in her western Michigan district by 85
percent by dedicating an attorney and one staff to
prosecutions of these cases.
Paul Charlton, the fired U.S. Attorney from Arizona,
said one of two reasons Justice told him he was
being fired was because he'd called on the FBI to
tape confessions. Charlton later said an FBI
policy against taping confessions harms the
prosecution rates of Indian child molestations
because molesters' confessions are often critical to
these cases.
Majel-Dixon and other Native women leaders say that
sexual predators target Indian lands because they
know that their chances of getting investigated and
prosecuted are slim. If these cases are prosecuted,
it is most likely by a tribal court which, under
federal law, can only impose a one-year sentence
even for the most violent rape by a repeat offender.
Native leaders say white rapists travel from
reservation to reservation offending...
''The joke is the perpetrators have severe laws they
face in the non-Indian world,'' Majel-Dixon said.
''But with the help of the attorneys general, the
president and Congress, we ended up with a one-year
imprisonment no matter what you did.''
- Indian Country Today
July 06, 2007
Added July 14, 2007
Guatemala
Indigenous Mayan
Guatemalans burn
police
headquarters
demanding to
lynch prisoner
accused of
kidnapping baby
Indígenas
guatemaltecos queman una sede de la policía
exigiendo linchar a un detenido por robar a un niño.
A group
of native Guatemalan set afire to the local
headquarters of the National Civil Police (PNC) and
an electric station in Cuna, Residents were intent
on lynching 18-year-ols Juan Maldonado, who they
accuse of kidnapping a baby boy the previous week.
Police
report that about 3,500 local residents were
involved in the violence.
The baby
was rescued by neighbors, and has been returned to
its parents.
Nidia
Aguilar, director of the Childhood and the Youth
Protection of the Office of the Judge Advocate
General of Human Rights (PDH), revealed last week
that in the first six months of 2007 their office
has seen 230 reports of kidnapped children.
“We think
that organized bands are kidnapping children to sell
them in the prostitution, and to sell them in
illegal foreign adoptions [often to the U.S.].
[Organ
traffickers are also actively kidnapping children.]
This past June 15th, in the town of Camotán,
Chiquimula, police found the body of a nine year old
girl with her heart and other organs removed.
- Indian Country Today
July 06, 2007
Added July 14, 2007
Brazil
Asesinado el
periodista que denunció una red de prostitución
infantil en Brasil.
Brazilian journalist Luiz Carlos Barbom Filho, 37,
who four years ago denounced a child prostitution
network in the State of São Paulo, has been murderd.
A news article by Barbom Filho exposed a network of
child prostitution in which four industrialists and
five
São Paulo
city councilmen were involved. Those convicted were
given prison sentences of between six and fifteen
years. All have since been released from
prison [because of their connections].
-
ELPias.com
July 05, 2007
Added July 14, 2007
Spain, Brazil
La Isla de Gran
Canaria - La Policía desarticula en Las Palmas una
red de explotación sexual de mujeres brasileñas
Las Plamas, Gran Canary Island - Spanish police have
rescued 18 young Brazilian women who had been
trafficked by a Brazilian run criminal organization.
-
ELPias.com
July 05, 2007
Added July 09, 2007
Guatemala
Mujeres jóvenes,
menores de 30 años, sin ocupación definida,
probable-mente no incorporadas al mercado laboral
formal, en su mayoría solteras, pertene-cientes a un
nivel social con altos índices de exclusión, es el
perfil más común de féminas asesinadas en el
departamento de Guatemala diariamente.
An analysis of crime in Guatemala has found that
young, mostly single women under 30, without a
defined occupation, who are probably not employed in
the formal economy and who belong to a social strata
that faces social exclusion [indigenous and other
poor women], comprise the most common profile of
women facing murder on a daily basis in Guatemala.
...Guatemala is an
extremely heavily armed society where not only
average citizens, but criminal elements and youth
gangs carry weapons. This contributes to the
high rates of murder, which severely affects women.
- CERIGUA
Guatemalan Human Rights News
Guatemala City
07-06-2007
See also:
About
the crisis of femicide in indigenous Guatemala
LibertadLatina
note:
Over 500 women are brutally murdered in Guatemala
each year. Most victims are tortured and
raped, and many are dismembered.
Guatemala's 'femicide' involves a murder rate that
is ten times higher than in the case of the mass
murder of women plaguing
Ciudad Juarez,
Mexico. In a July 8, 2007
conversation with a woman active in assisting Native
women in Guatemala, she noted that the situation is
getting worse over time, and that the paramilitary
(armed civilian patrols created by the army during
the 1980's Guatemalan anti-Mayan genocide) were the
cause of most violence against women.
Note that torture,
rape, murder and decapitation were the military
tactics used against Guatemala's Mayan indigenous
population during the 1980's civil war, when
paramilitaries (trained and armed by the United
States, Israel and Pinochet's Chile) ravaged the
nation, leading to the deaths of 200,000 innocent
civilians, including 50,000 women. Almost all
Mayan women and girls were raped by government armed
forces during that period.
Ten years after the
peace accords
were signed ending that war, nothing has changed for
victims of gender violence.
- Chuck Goolsby LibertadLatina
July 12, 2007
The CERIGUA
Guatemalan human rights news service web site was
hacked and shut-down for the second time on June 22,
2007.
- IFEX
June 26, 2007
Added July 09, 2007
Mexico
Former general: Military
rapes of women part of a campaign of low intensity
warfare
[Strategy is especially
designed to tear at the social fabric of indigenous
communities]
Soldados violan
mujeres como parte de guerra de baja intensidad
According to
former Mexican Army Brigadier General José Francisco
Gallardo Rodríguez, rapes and other abuses committed
by elements of the Mexican Army against women in
Castaños (in Coahuila state); Zongolica (in Veracruz);
Nocupétaro (in Michoacán) and San Salvador Atenco(in
Mexico state) are all part of a strategy of low
intensity warfare which has as its common
denominator the abuse of power, the use of sexual
assault [as a weapon], impunity, and other violations of
human rights.
-
María de la Luz Tesoro
- CIMAC Noticias
News for Women
Mexico City
07-06-2007
See also:
General
Gallardo's long overdue release is a welcome step
but fails to address the flagrant abuse of the
judicial system which led to his detention and
conviction.
- Amnesty International
02-08-2002
Added July 09, 2007
Mexico
Human trafficking ring kidnaps
indigenous babies in Mexico's Quintana Roo state
State fails to prosecute
kidnappers
Existe red de trata de bebés indígenas en
Quintana Roo
First, traffickers kidnapped her
baby. Then after
finding the baby,
state authorities threw her
into prison for two months to await DNA test results proving her
maternity. Now, [the
legal process has refused to punish the kidnappers].
This is the story of Mayeli, an indigenous teenage mother who doesn’t
speak Spanish, and who gave birth at a local hospital where a female
doctor convinced her to work as her domestic
servant. The doctor then kidnapped the newborn.
According to Teresa Ulloa, director of the Latin American and Caribbean
regional branch of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), a
human trafficking ring is targeting indigenous babies in the city of
Carillo Puerto, where Mayeli gave birth to her child.
...more
-
Jonathan Pardiñas
- CIMAC Noticias
News for Women
Mexico City
07-06-2007
Added July 09, 2007
Mexico
Purga en la
policía mexicana
As part of its increasingly intensive offensive
against narco-traffickers, the government of
President Felipe Calderon has purged the National
Preventive Police (PFP) and the Fiscal Police (AFI)
of 284 officials for connivance with traffickers.
Those affected include 32 state heads of the PFP who
have been relieved of their duties pending the
results of polygraph and drug tests.
mQh
Blog
June 26, 2007
Added July 09, 2007
Peru
Peruvian human
rights violator receives maximum sentence in U.S.
immigration case
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforce-ment (ICE),
Office of Investigation in Miami, has announced that
a federal district court has sentenced Telmo Ricardo
Hurtado-Hurtado to six months in a federal prison
after pleading guilty in May 2007 to making a false
statement to a federal agency and visa fraud.
Hurtado was arrested in April 2007 in connection
with false statements on his December 2002 U.S. visa
application. IHurtado stated that he had never been
arrested or convicted of a crime. In fact, Hurtado
was convicted in 1993 in Peru on charges related to
his involvement in the 1985 Accomarca massacre in
Peru, during which 69 villagers were killed.
-
U.S. Department of Justice - Southern District
July 03, 2007
See
also:
In a historic ruling,
Peru's Supreme Court authorized on Sept. 23 [2006]
the extradition request for Hurtado, who years ago
confessed to being responsible for the Aug. 14, 1985
massacre of 74 children, women and old men in the
Andean highlands village of Accomarca, in the
southeastern region of Ayacucho.
...The lawyer for the victims' families, Karin
Ninaquispe, who kept the legal process going
single-handedly, told IPS that of the 74 villagers
killed that day in Accomarca, 30 were children
ranging in age from six months to 14 years, 20 were
between the ages of 25 and 40, and the remaining 24
were between the ages of 55 and 80. Most of the
adults were women, including an 80-year-old
grandmother.
From Hurtado's Peruvian Court Martial testimony:
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