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Noticias de
Julio, 2008
July 2008 News
(News Added During July, 2008)
Unites States
Native Women Receive
Protection
The
Tribal Law and Order Act of 2008, designed to lower
sexual violence against American Indian and Alaskan
Native women, was introduced July 23rd by the Senate
Indian Affairs Committee. The bill would enable
tribal police to enforce violations of federal laws
on Indian lands and offers them greater access to
criminal history information.
Amnesty International, which in a 2007 report found
the rate of rape and other sexual violence for this
population of women 2.5 times higher than that for
other U.S. women, hailed the bill.
On
July 17, the committee also held a hearing on the
implementation of the Adam Walsh Act for tracking
sex offenders, which the U.S. Congress passed in
2006 without tribal consultation. The law requires
tribal governments to include all convictions for
qualifying sex offenses in their registries and
register offenders in the places where they live and
work. Those [tribes] that don’t comply will
automatically cede jurisdiction to the state,
reported
Indianz.com
on
July 11, 2008.
The
majority of tribes that are now working to create
their own tracking systems face a 2009 deadline. The
National Congress of American Indians has said that
tribes that opt to implement the Adam Walsh Act
should have the same rights and access to criminal
databases as U.S. states.
- Besa Luci
WomensNews
July 26, 2008
LibertadLatina
Commentary:
Native women and children in the United States have
long been subjected to criminal impunity. Today it is
unprosecuted sexual assault that is the most glaring
example of the second class status that indigenous
people continue to hold in this country.
The statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice
show that Native women in the U.S. have a 3.5 times
higher rate of exposure to sexual assault than other
groups of women (Amnesty International states that the
rate is 2.5 times higher).
During recent
years, the crime of rape on Native reservations has
been virtually ignored and unprosecuted by federal
prosecutors who, in addition to local tribal courts,
have jurisdiction over such cases.
As Congress had written the current law, and as the
President has enforced it, the typically white,
non-resident rapists who stalk women on U.S.
reservations can only receive a ONE YEAR jail
sentence for rape - from a tribal court, no matter
if the assailant is a repeat offender.
It has also been especially troubling to the Native
community that 5 of the 8 federal prosecutors who
were fired by former U.S. Attorney General Gonzalez
had focused their efforts on increasing the
prosecution and conviction rates for rapists who
victimized women on
Native reservations.
We at sincerely hope that the Tribal Law and Order
Act of 2008 repairs these errors in the provision of equal protection
under the law as it applies to Native women, and
their undue exposure to gender violence.
- Chuck Goolsby
Afro Creek Catawba
LibertadLatina
July 30, 2008
See also:
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 14, 2007
Native America
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.
...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...
- Indian Country Today
July 06, 2007
Mexico
Desaparecidas, muestras de
exhumación de Susana Xocua
Tissue Samples
from Exhumed Body of Indigenous Woman Victim
Disappear
LibertadLatina
note:
As reported in a July
18th story by CIMAC Noticias in Mexico, federal and
Veracruz state judicial authorities recently conducted the
exhumation of the body of Susana Xocua, a
64-year-old indigenous woman from the Zongolica
Mountain region of Veracruz. The Xocua case is
troubling in that state authorities at-first labeled
the death to be from natural causes, despite the
fact that 250 neighbors saw Ms. Xocua's body lying
in a corn field bloodied, semi-nude, with her legs
opened, and with visible signs of torture present.
**
Juan Carlos Mezhua Campos, the
Secretary for Indigenous Affairs for the
Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD), has announced that
the tissue samples taken during the recent autopsy of
the body of Ms. Susana Xocua have
disappeared.
In addition, the federal forensic
specialists requested who were believed to be
participating in the examination have issued a statement saying that
they were not involved in the autopsy of Ms. Xocua.
The family of Ms. Xocua had
requested that independent forensic specialists from the
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
participate. However, Veracruz authorities assured
the family that it was not necessary, as federal experts from Mexico City
were participating.
With the federal denial of
involvement in the forensic investigation and with
the disappearance of the tissue samples, state
officials are now announcing that they don't know who is
in charge of analyzing the tissue samples.
In other
developments...
* Veracruz state congressional deputy
Alba Leonila Méndez, president of the legislature's
Commission on Equality and Gender, is demanding
rapid government action to clarify the unusual
deaths of four indigenous senior citizen women. The victims,
after apparently having been raped and murdered,
were judged by Veracruz judicial authorities to have
died from natural causes.
* Veracruz governor Fidel Herrera
Beltrán travelled to the Zongolica Mountain region
to participate in the inauguration of the first
office of the state public prosecutor's office that
will specialize in crimes against sexual freedom and
against the family. The governor remarked that the
opening was a first step in "trying to root out
ominous and discriminatory treatment against
indigenous women in regard to injustices,
inequalities, atrocities and family violence."
- Mónica Tejeda and Guadalupe
Gómez Q.
CIMAC Noticias
Women's Rights News
Mexico City
July 30, 2008
Mexico
Violencia Contra Mujeres
Migrantes en Aumento
About Violence Against Migrant Women
in Mexico
The
National Institute for Women (Inmujeres) has
announced that Central and South American migrant
women face the risk of being trafficked
as they cross Mexico on on their way to the United
States. Wherever they end their journey [in the U.S.
or Mexico], they face discrimination, labor
exploitation, low wages, precarious living conditions, and
have no access to social services.
For
these reasons, Inmujeres considers that the two most
critical problems facing women migrants today are reproductive and sexual health, and gender violence.
Due
to current migration patterns, the problem of
HIV/AIDS is having an especially severe impact on
these women. They are put into high-risk situations
during their long journey, due to the high frequency of
sexual assaults that occur.
- CIMAC Noticias
Women's Rights News
Mexico City
July 24, 2008
Mexico
Centroamericanas víctimas de
trata sexual y laboral al pasar por Veracruz
Central
American migrants who seek to reach the United
States are tricked into sex and labor slavery in
Veracruz
City of Xalapa, Veracruz state -
During a recent workshop conducted by the
International Organization for Migration (IOM), Martha
Mendoza Parissi, director of the Veracruz Women's
Institute (IVM) declared that human traffickers in
their southern Mexican state are luring women
migrants into slavery through deception. Women are
offered supposedly high-paying jobs, an offer that
they find attractive because it eliminates the need
to go through the long [and expensive and risky]
journey to the United States to improve their living
conditions.
In
Veracruz there are few reports of trafficking in
women, said Mendoza Parissi. In fact, there are no
recorded complaints involving the many undocumented
Central American women who are known to be
trafficked into sexual slavery in the southern counties of the state.
Mendoza Parissi: "it is common to see street ads in
municipalities such as Acayucan, that are designed
as a hook to pull these women into jobs in which
nobody knows where the job is, nor who they will be
working for. They only show a cell phone number.
That is where the businesses that engage in human
trafficking may possibly be found."
Mendoza Parissi went on to say that for these
reasons, it is important for government agencies to
understand what trafficking is and how it operates,
so that they can build strategies to combat it.
"Often it is the women victims who are punished by
the law for defending themselves against being
forced against their will to engage in a particular
activity." It is precisely for that reason, she
noted, that women refuse to report abuses by men to
the authorities.
"Local governments create 'bottlenecks' in providing
access to the law as it relates to violence against
women. We have to resolve these issues as a first
step."
The
IOM and IVM are currently planning to conduct a
study of human trafficking in Veracruz as a next
step in their collaboration.
- CIMAC Noticias Womens Rights News
Mexico City
July 24, 2008
Florida, USA
Colombian warlords plead
guilty to drug charges
Miami - Two warlords from a far-right Colombian
paramilitary group blamed for some of modern
Colombia's worst atrocities pleaded guilty Tuesday
in federal court to a drug conspiracy charge.
Ramiro Vanoy Murillo, 60, and Francisco Javier
Zuluaga Lindo, 38, are among 14 paramilitary members
extradited to the U.S. in May for their alleged
roles in a massive cocaine smuggling operation in
the late 1990s. The two entered their pleas before
U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore in downtown
Miami.
Under a plea agreement, Vanoy Murillo faces up to 19
years and Zuluaga Lindo more than 17 years behind
bars. Prosecutors said they would drop additional
charges against the two at sentencing. Each could
also face up to $14 million in fines...
So
far, Diego Murillo, 47, is the only other member of
the extradited group [of 14 men] to have pleaded guilty. He
entered his plea in June to drug trafficking charges
in Manhattan federal court and faces a sentence of
up to 33 years in prison. He is scheduled to be
sentenced Dec. 18. Human rights organizations
claimed Diego Murillo was behind hundreds of murders
in Colombia as part of the right-wing United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia [AUC]...
Thousands of Colombians have lodged formal
complaints of ``atrocious crimes'' against the
paramilitaries - including murder, rape and
kidnapping. Hundreds of mass graves are thought to
remain hidden in Colombia.
- Laura Wides-Munoz
The Associated Press
July 29, 2008
Mexico
Drug-abuse backlash in Mexico
Agua
Prieta, Sonora state - Perla got hooked on crack and
crystal meth at age 12. Soon she was prostituting
herself to support her habit.
At
her lowest point, the girl said, she was selling sex
for 50 pesos, about $4.75.
"As
soon as one rock was done, I'd be out trying to get
money for another," said Perla, whose last name is
being withheld because of her age.
Now
15, Perla is in a rehab center in this Mexico border
town, trying to put her life back together.
Stories like Perla's are multiplying as Mexico
confronts a growing problem with drug addiction, a
phenomenon that some experts blame on the Mexican
government's crackdown on drug cartels and
stepped-up U.S. border enforcement.
With
drugs harder to smuggle into the United States, more
remain in Mexico, where they are sold to local
consumers, said Marcela López Cabrera, director of
the Monte Fenix Center for Advanced Studies in
Mexico City, which trains drug counselors...
- Chris Hawley
AZ Central
July 28, 2008
New York State, USA
Veteran Buffalo Police officer
faces criminal sex charge, expected in court
A
veteran Buffalo Police officer facing a criminal sex
charge is expected to appear in court Wednesday.
38-year-old Monte Montalvo is accused of forcibly
performing oral sex on 19-year-old girl last
December.
It
allegedly happened at Montalvo's home after he
worked as an off duty security officer for a
Fraternity party.
Montalvo has been suspended from the force during
the investigation.
- WIVB
July 23, 2008
Hawaii, USA
Minister Charged With Abusing
Girl
Honolulu - A Kaneohe minister was held on $2 million
bail after being accused of sexually assaulting a
member of his congregation for several years.
Manual Guillermo Taboada was the spiritual leader of
a group of families who shared a large home in
Kaneohe. Prosecutors said he abused his position to
abuse a girl over eight years, starting when she was
12.
Taboada’s Web site describes him as a rags to riches
immigrant from Peru who has devoted his life to God.
On the site, he lectures visitors against the way of
the flesh.
But
prosecutors said the 57-year-old minister was a
hypocrite, leading several families in a communal
lifestyle while molesting a member of the flock for
years.
“He
told her if she told anyone that the ministry would
fall apart and the children of other families would
be taken away,” said deputy prosecutor Vickie Kapp.
The
woman reported the abuse last week after turning 21.
Taboada was arrested...
- KITV
July 23, 2008
California, USA
Inland Empire Teen rape
victim, mother speak out
Montclair police are searching for the suspect they
say raped a teenage girl as she cried for help.
The
14-year-old victim told police a man grabbed her by
the arm as she walked home through an alley on
Sunday night.
She says the suspect pinned her down on an old
mattress behind a dumpster and raped her, and when
she screamed, no one came to help.
The
victim and her mother spoke to Eyewitness News about
the alleged attack.
"I
screamed three times three loud times. The first
time I screamed he'd put his hand over my mouth, he
slapped me and told me to shut up," the victim said.
"I
want make him pay for what he did to my daughter. I
want the ultimate punishment, and he'd be lucky if
the cops catch him before I do," said mother Tina
Torres.
The
victim says the suspect also threatened her with a
gun, although she never saw it.
The
suspect is described as a Hispanic man, between 18
and 20 years old...
- KABC
Los Angeles, California
July 29, 2008
Tennessee, USA
MS 13 Leader Pleaded Guilty In
Court On Monday
Nashville - The motto of the MS 13 gang is
"kill, rape, control.”
MS 13 is one of the largest and most violent gangs
in the U.S., but when they made their way to
Nashville, their violence couldn't be ignored with
shootings and slayings often taking place in south
Nashville.
Sgt.
Gary Kemper brought three years of investigations to
help prosecute the members, including a double
homicide on Nolensville Road in June 2006 in which
MS 13 gang members killed two men who they thought
were in a rival gang.
"MS
13 worked on intimidation and fear and intimidation
of the Hispanic community. That’s the way they
worked. Their whole MO (method of operation) is
fear," said Kemper...
The
three who pleaded guilty in court on Monday were the
group’s leaders. The most current head of the gang,
Escolastico Serrano agreed to 45 years in prison.
His
brother Oscar Serrano and high-ranking member Ronald
Fuentes faced between 30 years to life. They'll be
sentenced in September.
- WSMV
Sara Dorsey
July 28, 2008
Added July 28, 2008
Mexico
Otra Carta de una Sobrevivente
de Ciudad Juarez
Another Letter
from a Survivor of Ciudad Juarez
[Teresa Ortiz, an
occasional contributor to
LibertadLatina,
found it necessary to flee the 'gender hostile
living environment' in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, for a
better life in the United States. Her letters,
which tell the truth about the realities in Mexico
for women today, are available at the above link in
Spanish and English.]
Excerpt from
Letter 3:
...It
is incredible to see that
the mere fact of being born women puts us at a 90%
risk [of our lives].
Sanity no longer
exists. Poverty and ambition have finished-off with all human values.
The narcos see us
[women] as a secure transport for their drugs. They don’t look at our bodies as
a divine work but as a tool to do their dirty work. Our breasts, our stomachs,
our vaginas and our uterus, are the perfect vessels to transport their garbage
[illegal drugs].
Sex traffickers see
the same thing, hoping to find in our bodies the perfect business.
Organ traffickers
look at us and start adding-up the millions in profits
that unscrupulous doctors and organizations will pay
for our healthy organs.
Sexual predators
carefully stalk us, looking for the right time to rape us. In every case, if we
resist, they simply murder us.
Where is the law, and the government?
They are there, and
they are perfectly aware of the problem.
But they are
filling their own pockets with cash, cash from the inert body of a woman.
Perhaps she is a little girl, or the mother of a family, or a university
student, or a prostitute.
These bureaucrats
know perfectly well what is done with each disappeared and murdered woman. But
these bodies are their little gold mine. After every transaction they celebrate
and prepare for the next victim...
[Extended
text in Spanish and English]
- Teresa Ortiz
July 28, 2008
Added July 28, 2008
Mexico
En el DF, 50 mil niñas y 50
mil mujeres víctimas de explotación sexual
Researcher: 50,000 children
and 50,000 women are sexually exploited in Mexico
City
One
of the centers of sexual exploitation in Mexico City
is located in the vicinity of the Secretariat of
National Defense (SEDENA) near Military Camp Number
1, to the west of Mexico City, where military
commanders come to pay up to 55,000 pesos [US
$5,487] for [sex
with] "niñas
vírgenes" [virgin underage girls].
Currently in Mexico
City
there are 50 thousand women and 50 thousand girls
who are sexually exploited.
Some 80 percent of them
have a history of being raped and abused. Eighty
five percent of these women and girls were born in
the city. Another 15 percent came here through
fraud, deception, sale, coercion or theft.
These statistics were
documented by Rodolfo Casillas, a specialist in the
field and a history teacher at El Colegio de Mexico,
in his book "I remember well… Testimonies and
perceptions of trafficking in girls and women in
Mexico City," presented Tuesday in a presentation at
the Digna Ochoa auditorium, at the Human Rights
Commission of the Federal District (CDHDF)...
For Juan Artola,
representative in Mexico for the International
Organization for Migration (IOM), both across Mexico
and in the capital city, the issue of trafficking is
not new one, even if it is only now being widely
recognized. Artola draws attention to the [absolute]
lack of goods and services to support the victim
community...
Federal deputy
(congresswoman) Maricela Contreras Julián, president
of the Commission on Equality and Gender of the
Chamber of Deputies, found the data and testimony
provided in the book to be shocking, and announced
that through the Commission that she chairs,
Congress will provided 70 million pesos [US $7
million dollars )for a
shelter for trafficked women...
[Expanded
Translation]
-
Sandra Torres Pastrana
and Carolina Velázquez
CIMAC Noticias
Women's Rights News
Mexico City
July 23, 2008
North Carolina, South Carolina,
USA
Mexican National Sentenced For
Role In Sex-Trafficking Ring In The Carolinas
Washington, DC - Jesus
Perez-Laguna, a citizen of Mexico, was sentenced
July 17, 2008 in federal court in Columbia, S.C., on
charges stemming from a sex trafficking ring
involving at least one teenage girl. Perez-Laguna
was sentenced to over 14 years imprisonment and
ordered to pay $52,500 in restitution to his
victims. After his release from prison, Perez-Laguna
will be on federal supervised release for the rest
of his life...
In April, Perez-Laguna’s
co-defendant, Ciro Bustos-Rosales, was sentenced to
70 months in prison, ordered to pay restitution, and
ordered to comply with similar terms and conditions
of release as those included in Perez-Laguna’s
sentence.
During their guilty plea
hearings in September 2007, both men admitted that
they were involved with transporting a 14-year-old
girl across the border between the United States and
Mexico and the border between North Carolina and
South Carolina in order for the minor to engage in
prostitution. Additionally, both men admitted that
they harbored illegal aliens for the purpose of
prostitution.
“Sex traffickers prey on
young girls and vulnerable women who are brought
into the United States, kept far from home, and
forced into prostitution,” said Grace Chung Becker,
Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil
Rights Division. “The Court’s sentence demonstrates
the Justice Department’s commitment to prosecuting
those who exploited this young victim, who hopefully
can now move on to a better life.”
“This is a fitting end
to a disturbing case. Mr. Perez-Laguna had no regard
whatsoever for the young girls he enslaved and
victimized,” stated W. Walter Wilkins, U.S. Attorney
for the District of South Carolina. “I applaud the
dedication and hard work of the investigative agents
who exposed this ring and the prosecutors who
ensured the convictions...”
-
U.S. Dept. of Justice
July , 2008
Maryland, USA
Former Montgomery County,
Maryland Man Pleads Guilty to Holding Teenage
Nigerian Girl in Involuntary Servitude
Washington - George
Udeozor, 52, formerly of Darnestown, Md., pleaded
guilty today to holding a Nigerian girl in
involuntary servitude, the Justice Department
announced. U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte
scheduled sentencing for Oct. 7, 2008 at 9:30 a.m.
George Udeozor faces a
maximum sentence of 10 years in prison followed by
three years of supervised release...
According to his plea
agreement, in September 1996, George Udeozor
traveled to Nigeria and using the passport of his
oldest daughter, smuggled a 14-year-old Nigerian
girl to his home in Maryland. He and his then-wife,
Dr. Adaobi Stella Udeozor, used the girl as an
unpaid domestic servant and child care provider for
their six children for approximately five years,
from October 1996 to Oct. 28, 2001. The victim
cooked, cleaned the home, did laundry, and took care
of the Udeozor children. During that time, the
victim was physically abused.
"The defendant stole
part of the victim's youth by sexually abusing and
forcing a teenage African girl to serve as a
domestic servant for over one year," stated Grace
Chung Becker, Acting Assistant Attorney General for
the Civil Rights Division...
-
U.S. Dept. of Justice
July 16, 2008
NOTORIOUS SEX TRAFFICKERS!
Added July 27, 2008
New York, USA
Grandmother Guilty in Violent Mexican Prostitution Ring
[Head of brutal family-run
kidnapping and sex trafficking ring was extradited
from Mexico]
Cadman Plaza East - A diminutive grandmother pleaded guilty to her role in a
family-run prostitution ring that smuggled women from Mexico to New York who
were sometimes violently coerced to perform sex acts.
Consuelo Carreto Valencia, who is from Mexico, pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal
court in Brooklyn, quickly bringing to a close a trial that had begun only a day
earlier.
The 4-foot-10, 61-year-old woman had faced 12 counts of conspiracy, sex
trafficking and smuggling. She pleaded guilty to one sex-trafficking count and
faces a sentence of no more than 14 years in prison.
Her attorney, John S. Wallenstein, said she was deathly afraid that she would
die in prison if convicted on all counts.
He said he warned Carreto about the strength of the government’s case. “I said
the jurors are going to want to jump out of the jury box and tear you to
pieces,” Wallenstein said...
Prosecutors said Carreto was the matriarch of a family operating a human
smuggling operating out of the town of San Miguel de Tenancingo. The Carretos,
according to prosecutors, “engaged in a scheme to lure, entice, compel and
coerce Mexican women and girls into prostitution” in Mexico and the United
States.
The women and girls were smuggled across the border and brought to two
apartments in Corona, Queens, where two of Carreto’s sons and another person
forced the women — through violence, sexual assault, threats and other methods
of coercion — to become prostitutes, prosecutors said...
-
Associated Press
July 24, 2008
New York, USA
See also:
Mexican woman pleads guilty to
sex trafficking
-
U.S. ICE
July 22, 2008
Sex Slavery Investigation in
New York City Nets Human Traffickers
...In one of the largest sex trafficking cases since
the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection
Act of 2000, a federal investigation led to guilty
pleas from three Mexican men to 27 counts of forcing
young Mexican women into prostitution in brothels
throughout the New York City area...
- Jim Kouri, CPP
April 24, 2005
Three
Carreto
Family Suspects Plead Guilty to All 27 Counts in New
York City Trafficking Trial.
Prosecution is one largest sex trafficking cases to
date under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
-
U.S.
Department of Homeland Security
April 5, 2005
Dirty Little Secret in Corona
Cops Allege Homes in Queens [New
York] Were Prisons for Latin Sex Slaves
- John Marzulli
New York Daily News
April 4, 2005
Mexican Women Set to Testify
Against Alleged [Carreto] Sex Traffickers
- The Associated Press
April 3, 2005
Rescued From The Shadows
(48 Hours Special)
(Covers Carreto Case)
- Peter Van Sant
CBS News
Feb. 23, 2005
Mexican officials arrest
suspects in New York-linked sex slavery ring
- John Rice
EFE
Feb. 23, 2004
The Girls Next Door
[An
extensive article covering the brutal
methods used by family-run Mexican Sex
Trafficking mafias, including the Carreto
Family].
...Once the Mexican traffickers abduct or
seduce the women and young girls, it's not
other men who first indoctrinate them into
sexual slavery but other women….
"Women are the ones who exert violent force
and psychological torture..."
- New York Times
Jan. 25, 2004
|
Mexico
Exhuman a Susana Xocua, violada y asesinada en Zongolica
Elderly Indigenous Woman Who Was Raped and Murdered is
Exhumed
Susana Xocua exhumation, a case of rape and murder in Zongolica
Two
months after a the family insisted that the Veracruz state government exhume the
body of Susana Xocua Tezoco, and elderly indigenous woman, the state Attorney
General of Justice heeded the request, and performed the exhumation together
with experts from the federal government.
Relatives and neighbors of the woman from the community of San Jose in the
Zongolica region had rejected the opinion of the PGJE death by a "strangled
herniated bladder." Authorities never performed an autopsy on Xocua Tezoco,
despite the fact that when her body found on May 25th, she was semi-nude, her
legs were open, she was bloodied and she showed visible signs of torture. The
victim was seen in this condition by 250 witnesses from her community.
The
case of Susana Xocua is the fourth to have occurred in the Sierra Zongolica with
similar characteristics: the victims have all been older adult women with signs
of sexual violence and torture, whom the authorities have claimed died from
other [non-violent, non-criminal] causes...
...According to Julio Atenco Vidal, the Coordinator
of Indigenous Organizations of the Zongolica Mountain region (CROISZ), the
advanced state of decomposition of Susana Xocua may hide the physical and sexual
abuse suffered by her before death. Atenco Vidal expressed the idea that perhaps
the Veracruz Attorney General's office delayed the exhumation intentionally, to
obscure the facts in the case.
For his part, Attorney Veracruz announced that from this date forward, he will
prosecute public servants of the attorney general's office who apply for autopsy
waivers in cases where it is presumed that a death was caused by violence...
[Expanded Translation]
- Laura Castro Medina
- CIMAC
Noticias
Womens
Rights News
Mexico
City
July 18, 2008
Mexico
Presentan nuevo programa dirigido a mujeres indígenas en Guerrero
New Initiative Aims to Strengthen Indigenous Women's Rights
in Guerrero State
Mexico City - With the aim of strengthening the rights of indigenous women, the
United Nations Office for the Development for Women (UNIFEM) and Rosa Maria
Gomez, Secretary for Women's Affairs for the state of Guerrero, introduced in
the House of Deputies their "Agenda for Strengthening the Rights of Indigenous
Women."
UNIFEM consultant Patricia Olamendi Torres stressed that the project seeks
social justice for indigenous women, and the full exercise of their human rights
and citizenship, especially in cases where there are few or no [economic]
opportunities for themselves and their families.
[Expanded
Translation]
-
Sandra Torres Pastrana
CIMAC NOticias
Womens Rights News
Mexico City
July 11, 2008
New York, USA
Grandmother Guilty in Violent Mexican Prostitution Ring
Cadman Plaza East - A diminutive grandmother pleaded guilty to her role in a
family-run prostitution ring that smuggled women from Mexico to New York who
were sometimes violently coerced to perform sex acts.
Consuelo Carreto Valencia, who is from Mexico, pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal
court in Brooklyn, quickly bringing to a close a trial that had begun only a day
earlier.
The 4-foot-10, 61-year-old woman had faced 12 counts of conspiracy, sex
trafficking and smuggling. She pleaded guilty to one sex-trafficking count and
faces a sentence of no more than 14 years in prison.
Her attorney, John S. Wallenstein, said she was deathly afraid that she would
die in prison if convicted on all counts.
He said he warned Carreto about the strength of the government’s case. “I said
the jurors are going to want to jump out of the jury box and tear you to
pieces,” Wallenstein said...
Prosecutors said Carreto was the matriarch of a family operating a human
smuggling operating out of the town of San Miguel de Tenancingo. The Carretos,
according to prosecutors, “engaged in a scheme to lure, entice, compel and
coerce Mexican women and girls into prostitution” in Mexico and the United
States.
The women and girls were smuggled across the border and brought to two
apartments in Corona, Queens, where two of Carreto’s sons and another person
forced the women — through violence, sexual assault, threats and other methods
of coercion — to become prostitutes, prosecutors said. The women were compelled
to turn over their earnings — $25 to $35 for each sex act — to various brothel
owners and to the Carretos, prosecutors said. The money was then wired to
Mexico, prosecutors said.
Two of Carreto’s sons and a friend pleaded guilty to more than two dozen
criminal counts for their roles in the prostitution ring. The brothers were
sentenced to 50 years and the friend to 25.
Carreto was accused of helping to coordinate the operation from Tenancingo. In
her plea, she admitted knowing that a woman living in her house in Tenancingo
worked as a prostitute and had been brought to New York to work as a prostitute,
her attorney said. She also acknowledged receiving money that had been wired
from her sons.
-
Associated Press
July 24, 2008
New York, USA
Woman Assaulted; Newborn Baby Dies
The Wayne County District Attorney's Office will decide Thursday whether an
illegal immigrant from Mexico will face more serious charges in connection with
the death of a newborn baby.
The Wayne County Sheriff's Department is investigating the death of the infant
after an assault on the baby's mother.
Authorities say Juan Martinez, 28, assaulted his girlfriend, Angelica
Ponce-Ramirez last week, causing her to go into premature labor.
Ponce-Ramirez delivered a baby girl at Strong Hospital Tuesday. The baby died
about an hour later.
D.A. Rick Healy says Martinez kneed Ponce-Ramirez in the stomach at least five
times and beat her leg with an extension cord.
Healy says the assault stemmed from an argument in which Martinez claimed he
wasn't the baby's father.
"This is really a troubling case," Healy said. "The allegation is at least on
the charge, it appears he intentionally assaulted her for the purpose of her
losing the baby or the baby dying. It appears that way from the allegation that
he struck her with his knee multiple times in her stomach. Being 28 weeks, that
was his intent. It appears that way..."
-
R News
Rochester, NY
July 23, 2008
Texas, USA
One Arrested,
Two Sought In Retired Officer's Shooting
Houston - A man was arrested and charged in connection with the shooting of a
retired Houston police officer, while two other persons of interest remained on
the loose, KPRC Local 2 reported Thursday.
Raziel Jesus Munoz, 20, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly
weapon.
Police said Munoz shot Belle Ortega, 78, at an apartment in the 6900 block of
South Loop East in southeast Houston on Monday at about 1:20 p.m.
Investigators said Ortega was visiting family members at the Plum Creek
apartment complex when she was critically wounded in a drive-by shooting...
Two other suspects, Bruno Aviles, 17, and Andrew Garcia, 20, are still wanted
for questioning in the shooting.
Ortega was the first Hispanic female officer in the Houston Police Department.
-
KPRC
July 24, 2008
Texas, USA
Jorge Mejia is charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child
Houston police are searching for a man accused of sexually assaulting a young
girl.
Jorge Mejia, 31, is charged with two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a
child in connection with attacks on a 9-year-old relative, police said.
The attacks occurred during the past year, said Officer M.S. Bailey, who is
investigating the case.
She said the child told another family member about the attacks.
"This child has been sexually assaulted by this guy several times," Bailey said.
She said Mejia was last seen about three weeks ago, when he sexually assaulted a
woman who also is one of his relatives.
Dale Lezon
Houston Chronicle
July 24, 2008
Florida, USA
Man wanted for sexually battering patient
Volusia County - Police said 50-year-old Carmelo Eduardo Reyes-Rosado, a medical
attendant at the center, is accused of pressuring a 26-year-old patient to have
sex with him several times at the facility.
As early as June 2, the woman alleges Rosado told her she needed to have sex
with him if she wanted to get into a residential treatment program. The patient
at the time was sedated and in what she said was an emotional state, and feared
she would not get the help she needed if she refused him.
She agreed, and told police that Rosado led her into a laundry room where he
asked her to perform a sex act on him. This was the first of several alleged
encounters at the treatment center that either took place in the laundry room or
a conference room.
The victim told police that she was told not tell anyone what had happened or it
would jeopardize her getting into the treatment program.
Police said the last encounter happened at the end of May when Rosado brought
another female in the room to witness the sex act.
Rosado quit his job the same day the patient filed the complaint against him.
Two days later, his attorney arranged a meeting with investigators where he
admitted to two of the sex acts. An arrest warrant was issued on Thursday after
the investigation was complete.
Police need your help finding Rosado...
-
FOX 35
Orlando , Florida
July 21 2008
Texas, USA
Francisco Pedraza Cruz fugitive on charges of Aggravated Sexual Assault of a
Child
Houston - Crime Stoppers and Harris County Sheriff's Office Child Abuse
Investigators are seeking the public's help for information leading to the
capture of 33 year old Francisco Pedraza Cruz, a fugitive on charges of
Aggravated Sexual Assault of a Child.
Around March 2000, Francisco Pedraza Cruz would enter the 7-year-old victim's
home when her mother was working and he would sexually assault her. This
happened on numerous occasions and the suspect told the victim if she told
anyone he would kill her and her mother. She finally told someone when she was
14 years old.
On June 26, 2008 charges of aggravated sexual assault of a child were filed on
Cruz. A warrant was issued out of the 183rd District Court and bond was set at
$30,000. He is described as a 5'6" Hispanic male weighing 210 pounds. He has
black hair, brown eyes, possibly a mustache and a medium complexion. He still
believed to be in the Houston area.
- KTRK
Houston, Texas
July 24, 2008
Indiana, USA
Man Accused of Raping Young Girl
A man is facing rape charges thanks to his fellow church goers. Members of an
Hispanic church in Evansville told police officers one of their members, Armando
Heras, had molested one of their other members, a 14-year-old girl. The girl
told officers he had forced himself on her twice and sent her an inappropriate
picture of himself via cell phone. Officers tracked down and arrested Heras, who
claims that when he and the girl were together sexually, it was consensual. He
faces several charges, including false informing for the fake name he gave
officers during the arrest.
-
TristateHomePage.com
July 14, 2008
Georgia, USA
Wanted for Rape of a Minor
Pierce County - Jorge Ibarra, 20, is wanted on charges he raped a 14-year-old
female, which was reported to authorities June 30...
Ibarra has warrants for child molestation, rape and aggravated sodomy. He is 5
feet 3 inches tall and weighs 160 pounds. He is said to be fluent in both
Spanish and English.
-
The Blackshear Times
July 16, 2008
Georgia, USA
3 hunted in home invasion and rape
Three suspects are being sought in what authorities are describing as a home
invasion armed robbery in which a 15-year-old female was raped.
The incident took place Thursday afternoon at a residence in the Beverly Park
neighborhood, south of Newnan off Millard Farmer Road.
Just before 1 p.m., Israel Salis Rodriguez, 26, was at the residence along with
a 15-year-old and two children when three Hispanic males entered through the
basement door wearing gloves and sunglasses, according to the Coweta Sheriff's
Office incident report.
Rodriguez told investigators he was surprised by two of the men when they came
up from the basement stairs. The intruders demanded money, and Rodriguez
attempted to fight them off. The intruders jumped him, tied him up with
extension cords and began punching him and burning his right leg with a lighter,
according to sheriff's office Major James Yarbrough.
The 15-year-old told officers that when the intruders entered the home, she was
in her room with the two children. When two of the intruders made their way
upstairs, the third intruder -- who was armed with a knife and a handgun --
remained in the basement with the three juveniles.
The attacker reportedly put the gun to the female's head and raped her,
according to investigators. The two children were unharmed...
Elizabeth Richardson
The Times-Herald
Coweta, Georgia
July 18, 2008
Ohio, USA
Abuse among immigrants more difficult to confront; victims especially afraid to
get help
Immigrants are no more likely to suffer abuse than other American women, experts
say, but they are less likely to see a way out.
Isolated, unsure and maybe reliant on their husband for their visa, "It's harder
for immigrant women to get safe." said Cathleen Alexander, executive director of
the Domestic Violence Center, which runs Cuyahoga County's domestic-violence
program.
Her center's recent experience in the Hispanic community illuminated a pent-up
demand for help. Three years ago, it launched its Latina Project, reaching out
to Latinas with lures like bilingual counselors and a Spanish-speaking support
group.
A dam seemed to burst. The number of incidents of abuse reported by Hispanic
women surged by 400 percent, to 240 cases last year.
One of the callers was Marta, an immigrant from South America who asked that her
full identity not be divulged, as she still fears her abuser and his family.
For weeks, she said, her boyfriend kept her locked in an apartment without a
phone, beating and raping her. At rare times when she was free of him, "I was
too afraid to call police. He had told me I would be ignored," she said through
an interpreter.
One Sunday, her minister slipped her a card with the Latina Project's linea de
ayuda, helpline. Now her ex-boyfriend is in jail and counselors are helping her
piece her life back together.
What immigrant women should know
* If you are the victim of abuse or rape, you have the right to the same
protections as any other woman in America.
* You will not be turned away from a women's shelter because you do not speak
English.
* If you ask for help, it is very unlikely anyone will ask about your
immigration status.
* If you are afraid to call the police or a crisis hot line, ask someone to call
for you.
* You will not be deported for leaving an abusive husband. U.S. law allows
battered women with temporary visas to petition for their own green cards.
-
Joshua Gunter
The Plain Dealer
July 17, 2008
Massachusetts, USA
Violent Assault In Front Of Local Church
Morning prayers at a Springfield church turn somber after the congregation
learns of a violent act that took place in front of their church early Sunday
morning.
Early this morning St. John's Congregational Church on Union Street was the
scene of a violent struggle. Police say just before 1 AM a woman was held at
knife point...dragged to a grassy area beside the church and sexually assaulted.
It's a crime that left church goers horrified as they stepped through the doors
for Sunday service.
Lilly Davis says, "They didn't have respect for God's house and to use another
person, that is disgusting."
Daphne Reid says, "It's a place where you go for prayer and to sanctify and I
think that it's wrong, I think we need a little more police in the neighborhood
to see what's going on."
Police say somehow the victim did manage to escape from her attackers by kicking
and screaming. Once she was out of their hands she called for help and was
transported by an ambulance to the hospital...
Right now police are on the lookout for two men described as Hispanic males. The
first is said to be in his 20's and was wearing a red shirt, a gold cross and
blue jeans. The second man was visibly older and has a cast on one of his hands.
Even though the congregation is upset the incident happened on church property,
many say it's not a complete shock and right now their prayers are with the
victim...
-
Meredith Broadcasting
July 13, 2008
Texas, USA
Lubbok police probe second abduction
Lubbock police are investigating the second kidnapping in a week involving a
white SUV, a stun gun, an attempted rape and a dark, secluded area.
Two women have reported being attacked by a Hispanic man in a white SUV. In both
cases, the attacker, described as in his late 20s or early 30s, around 6-feet
tall and 200 pounds, used a stun gun on the women.
"Because there are similarities, we're thinking they're related," said Lubbock
police Sgt. John Gomez...
-
Andre L. Taylor
Avalanche-Journal
July 12, 2008
Arkansas, USA
DNA links man to rape
Bond has been set at $100,000 for the suspect in a May 24 residential burglary
and rape of a Batesville woman, according to an Independence County Circuit
Court affidavit filed by Detective Mike Mundy with the Independence County
Sheriff’s Office.
The suspect, identified as Saul E. Reyes, 23, ...is behind bars after his DNA
was reportedly matched to his victim, her clothes and a knife he was said to be
carrying at the time of the incident.
In his affidavit, Mundy said that just before 6 a.m. on May 24, officers were
dispatched to another residence at 100 Hidden Valley Drive, where the victim
told them that a man had entered her home and raped her at knife point.
The woman said she didn’t know the man was in her home until she woke up with
him on top of her and holding a knife to her throat, telling her he would kill
her and her children, according to Mundy.
“(The victim) advised the suspect was a Hispanic male, short, skinny, with short
hair and a beard,” Mundy said. “She said the attacker kept telling her he loved
her.”
She also told police she would recognize the man’s voice if she ever heard it
again...
On June 11, officers were again dispatched to same residence regarding a
burglary in progress.
Upon their arrival they found a Hispanic man armed with a knife, lying on the
ground a few feet from a window that had been forced open, according to Mundy.
Mundy said Reyes was detained by officers while Detective Jeff Sims and Deputy
Rob Leonard spoke with the victim inside her home.
“While speaking with (her) and advising her they had a suspect, she heard the
suspect’s voice,” Mundy said. “She grabbed Deputy Leonard by the arm, becoming
quite emotional and stating, ‘That is the man that raped me...’
- Guardian Online
July 15, 2008
Tennessee, USA
Man charged in prostitute's rape
An Oak Ridge woman reported that she was raped on July 12 and then saw her
alleged assailant in the same area on Monday night and called police.
The 35-year-old victim on Sunday told police she had been raped on Saturday
night by a Hispanic man while three other Hispanic men held her. Officer Daniel
McFee saw the victim walking on West Outer Drive and talked to her there,
reports said.
She told McFee she was raped about 3 a.m. in the basement of an Applewood
apartment building on Hunter Circle. She said one of the men hit her on the head
with something, and they took her to a back room of the basement and raped her.
On Monday, she called the Police Department from a pay phone and reported seeing
the man going into another Hunter Circle apartment.
McFee arrested Alejandro Hernandez Cortez, 23, 103 Hunter Circle, for aggravated
rape in the case.
Police Capt. Rick Stone said the victim and another woman went to Hunter Circle
for solicitation of sex. He said the other woman was not a witness to the attack
but had apparently negotiated a sex act with another person in the area.
Stone said that although the victim is known in the area as a prostitute,
officers believe she may have been attacked. He said negotiations may have gone
bad or she may have changed her mind...
-
Beverly Majors
The Oak Ridger
July 15, 2008
Arizona, USA
Police: Sex Predator Behind 9 Attempted Attacks
Phoenix - A sex predator who tried to rape a 12-year-old girl June 11 is behind
nine attempted sex assault attacks since January, police said on Thursday.
Investigators said the man poses an immediate threat to the safety of children
in the community and Silent Witness posted a $1,000 reward for information
leading to the arrest and prosecution of the attacker.
The serial predator has targeted children and teens between the ages of 7 to 17,
said Sgt. Paul Penzone. He said all of the attacks have occurred between 2 p.m.
and 11 p.m.
The latest attack happened on Wednesday.
The June 11 attack occurred when the man approached a 12-year-old girl walking
alone to her friend's apartment, shoved her to the ground and tried to rape her,
police said.
The man ran up behind her in the 2200 block of West Campbell Avenue and
attempted to pull down her shorts, officers said.
When the man pushed her to the ground and tried to sexually assault her, the
girl screamed and the attacker released her, investigators said.
The girl ran to her friend's apartment and called police.
The man is described as a Native American or Hispanic male and is believed to be
between 20 and 29 years old...
- KPHO
July 18, 2008
Utah, USA
...Rapist behind bars
Hurricane investigators, with the help of St. George police have caught the man
suspected of rape, who has been on the run since last Sunday.
The victim called investigators on Saturday and said the suspect, 27 year old
Jaime Avila tried to contact her again.
"During the attempt she was able to get a licence plate number," says Ken
Perkins, Hurricane Police's public information officer.
Initial reports said the victim called 911 at around 2 am last Sunday to report
the attack that happened at around 3700 West and 150 North in Hurricane.
The 17 year old girl described her attacker as a
Hispanic male between 5'4 and 5
foot 8 inches tall, but did not know his name...
-
Chance Walser
KCSG
July 15, 2008
Washington State, USA
Rape reported in Centralia park
Centralia - Lewis County residents are on edge after two rapes were reported in
five days.
The first happened Wednesday at a Chehalis Subway shop where a female employee
was raped, tied up and robbed.
The latest rape was reported five miles away, in Centralia.
The 17-year-old victim says a stranger, on a bike, approached her Saturday at
Fort Borst Park.
Police say the suspect spoke in Spanish before leading her to a wooded area and
sexually assaulting her.
He rode away on his bike and she was able to make her way to a friend's house to
call 9-1-1.
-
KING5.com
July 20, 2008
Florida, USA
Rape suspect followed both victims to homes, officials say
Winter Haven - Law enforcement officials say they have learned how rape suspect
Edwin G. Mejia-Zapata found the victims.
The suspect didn't know the victims and it's just a coincidence the two victims
lived in the same neighborhood, according to Winter Haven spokeswoman Joy
Townsend.
Mejia-Zapata, 25, told officers he followed one victim from Burger King to her
home in the Verandahs at Lake Reeves subdivision, according to Townsend.
The second victim was
followed from the 7-Eleven convenience store on
Cypress Gardens Boulevard, near Lake Ruby, to her
home in the same subdivision, Townsend said...
A
native of Ecuador, Mejia-Zapata was arrested at his home around 6:20 p.m. Monday
and charged with the rape of the two women.
Through DNA testing, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement determined one
man was responsible for both rapes, though there wasn't a match in the existing
database at the time...
A former aircraft mechanic in the Navy, Mejia-Zapata is charged with two counts
of armed burglary and seven counts of sexual battery with a deadly weapon in
connection with the two rapes...
-
Shelly Godefrin
July 23, 2008
Texas, USA
Man wanted in woman's attack in downtown Austin
Austin police detectives released a composite sketch of a man they say attacked a
woman in downtown Austin and tried to sexually assault her.
The attack happened early in the morning on July 19 in the 1400 block of West
6th Street.
The woman told police the man walked up behind her and demanded her money. Then
he took her to a grassy area and tried to assault her, but she was able to get
away.
The man ran. He's described as a Hispanic man in his 20's...
-
KVUE.com
July 24, 2008
South Carolina, USA
Girl, 13, presumed to be with boyfriend, 21
Goose Creek - A 13-year-old girl has been missing more than a week, and police
have accused an illegal immigrant of being involved in her disappearance...
Fernanda Amores left her home about midnight July 14 after receiving several
e-mails from 21-year-old Noe Marin Jimenez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico,
authorities said. They said that Jimenez wrote in the e-mails that he would come
to Amores' house and pick her up that night.
Jimenez is wanted on a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor in
connection with Amores' disappearance.
"He is not suspected of endangering her. The two are, against the family's
wishes, a couple," said Casey Hoskins, Goose Creek public information officer.
"It is, typically, a kid walking off. The problem here is that, because he's
older, he is contributing to her delinquency."
-
Nadine Parks
The Post and Courier
July 24, 2008
Mexico
Ocho de cada diez migrantes
son violadas
Eight in every ten migrant
women is raped as they cross Mexico
The 'American
Dream' for many migrating women turns into a
nightmare when, as they cross from Central America
into Mexico, they become victims of psychological
torture and other abuses of all kinds.
According to the
latest report of the Forum on Migration, drafted
this year, eight out of 10
Central American women migrants who cross the southern border of
Mexico are raped, regardless of whether they are
adolescents or elderly women. Among them are
a high percentage of Guatemalan migrants [the
majority of Guatemalans are indigenous].
Mary Galván, a
social worker with the Instituto Madre Assunta, a
migrant assistance agency, notes that sexual abuse
is prevalent along both the southern and northern
borders of Mexico. Galván lamented that: "Central
American women are the most vulnerable, because they
attach them-selves to a male fellow traveler for
protection, and he takes advantage of her."
Galván recalled a
case from 2007, in which three sisters wanted to
cross the border. Assailants forced them to strip
naked. The youngest sister, because she was mentally
disabled, did not strip. She was grabbed by the hair
and taken away. She has not been heard from since...
Pedro Pantoja, a
priest who is in charge of the Posada Belén
(Bethlehem Shelter), located in Saltillo, in
Coahuila state, related the story of Marisa, a
Central American woman. Pantoja: "After passing
through the city of Tapachula [a border town near
Guatemala], due to a lack of
freight trains [to ride], Marisa had to walk through the
forest. Twelve men robbed her of everything, and
then they each raped her. A few days before this, a
policeman had also raped Marisa..."
(Extended
Translation)
-
Prensa Libre
July. 14, 2008
Dominican Republic
Republica Dominicana: En
primeros lugares del continente en trata de personas
Dominican Republic Holds
Record for Latin American Sex Trafficking
An estimated 50,000
Dominican women are victims of sex trafficking
networks
The Dominican
Republic occupies one of the three ghastly first
place positions in the number of victims of human
trafficking in the Americas, with an estimated
50,000 women victims, aside from additional numbers
of girls, boys and men also trapped in slavery.
During her remarks
at the opening of the seminar 'Protection for
Persons Affected by Trafficking,' Margarita Cedeño
de Fernández, First Lady of the Republic, stated
that trafficking in persons is a crime against the
state and those who are affected by it. It is a crime, she said,
that is linked to poverty, gender inequality, racial
discrimination, social marginalization and unequal
development...
A plan needed
The First Lady
noted that a national strategic plan of consolidated
action is needed. That plan must be well designed and
coordinated to serve as an effective tool to
eliminate this scourge, which, after trafficking in
weapons and drugs, has become the world's most
lucrative illegal activity.
In that vein, the
First Lady said that the Dominican
Republic has been combating human trafficking
since 1999. Work
began with the founding of the Inter-Agency
Committee for the Protection of Migrant Women (CIPROM),
created by Order 97-99. Since 2003 the country
has had a specific law, 137-03, to combat human
trafficking...
(Extended
Translation)
- Diario Libre
July. 14, 2008
Central America, Mexico
What is the status of the
Jacqueline Maria Jirón Silva case?
Question from Chuck
Goolsby to Catalina Fernandez, development
coordinator, Alianza Por Tus Derechos – June 12,
2008:
"What is the status of the
Jacqueline Maria Jirón Silva case?
Although every
victim is equal, this case is unique because we have
a picture of this Nicaraguan girl who was kidnapped
into sexual slavery at age 11, and because her
mother, a domestic worker in Costa Rica, has
travelled to every corner of Central America to find
her. See:
The Jaqueline Maria Jiron
Silva case."
Answer from Catalina Fernandez – June 20, 2008:
"Jacqueline turned
15 this June 11, 2008, and we continue searching.
The investigation
team of Alianza Por Tus
Derechos (Alliance For Your Rights) in Central America looked tirelessly for
Jacqueline in the border area between Guatemala and
Mexico, which has given us information that she is
there. However many factors make us believe that
her rescue is not possible.
First, the case of
Jacqueline reached Alliance for Your Rights nearly a
year after she disappeared. This caused us to loose
a lot of time in the search for her. Further, the
corruption that rules among many Central American
authorities has caused these officials to warn
Jacqueline’s captors when we are in a given area,
and they move her.
Here
at Alliance for Your Rights, we are convinced that
she was the victim of a network of traffickers that
began in [the city of] Chinandega, Nicaragua . She
was moved among the Central American countries, and
she is being sexually exploited in a brothel in the
Guatemala / Mexico border area.
We will not rest in
our search for Jacqueline, but we call upon the
authorities to help us. We know that there are
honest people in their ranks, and we want them, and
also the truck drivers who transit the border
region, to alert us when they see Jacqueline."
-
www.ChangeMakers.net
July 14, 2008
Guatemala
Rescatan a unos 150 menores
Some 150 children have been rescued from
prostitution during 2008
During the 2008
authorities in Guatemala have rescued 150 underage
victims from prostitution. The victims were being
exploited in bars, nightclubs and clandestine
parties.
In raids conducted
by multi-state task forces, 65% of the women
detained have been underage.
-
Coralia Orantes
Prensa Libre
July 14, 2008
Argentina
Unos 5.000 niños se
prostituyen en Buenos Aires, según informe
periodístico
Thousands of children and
youth engage
in prostitution in Buenos Aires, according to a
newspaper report
Some 5,000 underage
prostitutes exist on the streets of Buenos Aires...
says a report today that the Diario Popular
(the People's Journal), quoting sources from the
Argentine Federal Police.
According to an
expert from the federal police, poor children
between the ages of 8 and 17 are exploited by gangs
that offer tourists a "low cost and relatively safe"
form of impunity...
According to
Fabiana Tuñes, who directs the NGO Casa Encuentro,
80% of the women who are victims of sexual
exploitation are underage. Tuñes believes that the
unofficial estimate of 5,000 child victims in
Argentina's capitol "could be triple: that number.
She said that in Buenos Aires: "We have to dismember
trafficking networks and their accomplices in our
political, judicial and law enforcement
environments." Tuñes emphasized that "It is clear to
us that these [criminal child sex trafficking] organiza-tions could not operate in
the relaxed way that they do if
'liberated zones' that allowed
pedophilia did not exist.
(Extended
Translation)
- EFE News
July 14, 2008
Added July 15, 2008
Illinois, USA
Man accused of caging children
in back of pickup
Posen - A suburban
Chicago man locked his two young daughters in a wire
cage hidden in the back of his pickup truck because
he didn't have a baby sitter, officials said
Thursday.
Ricardo Gonzalez, 35, of
Midlothian, was arrested Monday after a woman at a
gas station in Posen heard a crying child and
spotted him pushing small hands back into a cage,
police said.
He had a wire cage
behind the front seats of his truck, police said.
Black-tinted windows and a large plywood board in
the back window concealed it.
Gonzalez told police he
used the cage because he didn't have a baby sitter.
He also said he wanted to control the girls, ages 2
and 5, so they wouldn't run away. Police said the
girls did not live in the cage.
Gonzalez will appear in
court July 31 on charges of misdemeanor child
endangerment. Cook County prosecutors were exploring
Thursday whether the charge could be upgraded to a
felony...
-
The Associated Press
July. 15, 2008
Washington, DC, USA
Serial rapist may lurk in the
Northwest section of Washing-ton,
D.C., police say
Washington, DC -
District of Columbia police believe a man may be
prowling the streets of Northwest neighborhoods
early in the morning, burglar-izing homes and raping
the women inside.
On Monday, noting a
recent surge in the number of rapes and attempted
rapes, police officials said many of the sex crimes
are likely connected.
Police said they’re not
sure that the latest incident, in which a Hispanic
male in his late teens or early 20s broke into a
woman’s home on the 3300 block of 18th Street NW
around 4 a.m. Thursday, raped her and then stole
some of her belongings, is connected to three
previous similar cases from earlier this year, but
it might be...
The first report came
May 16, the next was nine days later on May 25,
which was followed by a month break until the
culprit popped back up on June 26. Fourteen days
later, just before 5 a.m. he may have been back at
it.
With a man like that on
the loose, it’s best to be proactive, the two Holmes
men write. “Keep the windows and doors locked ... a
dog doesn’t hurt either.”
- The Examiner
Washington, DC
July. 15, 2008
Florida, USA
Fake cop uses threats and
demands sex
Tampa - Investigators
say Edwin Nieves pretended to be a police officer
and threatened to take away a pregnant woman's
children and notify immigration authorities unless
she had sex with him.
Nieves, a 38-year-old
from Tampa, faces charges of felony kidnapping,
impersonating an officer and aggravated battery on a
pregnant woman, jail records show. He was held in
lieu of $59,500 bail, records show...
Nieves... began to
fondle the woman, police say. The woman, who is
seven months pregnant, then persuaded Nieves to take
her home "so she could clean up" before sex, police
say.
He ordered her to meet
him in 30 minutes, police say.
Instead, the woman's
relatives went to the spot and got his license plate
number before he drove away, police say. When police
located him, he was dressed in a police uniform...
-
Abbie VanSickle and
Casey Cora
St. Petersburg Times
July. 15, 2008
Sudan
Sudanese president charged
with genocide in Darfur
The
Hague - Netherlands - The prosecutor of the
International Criminal Court filed genocide charges
Monday against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir,
accusing him of masterminding attempts to wipe out
African tribes in Darfur with a campaign of murder,
rape and deportation.
The
filing marked the first time prosecutors at the
world's first permanent, global war crimes court
have issued charges against a sitting head of state,
but al-Bashir is unlikely to be sent to The Hague
any time soon. Sudan rejects the court's
jurisdiction, and senior Sudanese officials said the
prosecutor was politically motivated to file the
charges.
Luis
Moreno-Ocampo asked a three-judge panel at the
International Criminal Court to issue an arrest
warrant for al-Bashir to prevent the slow deaths of
some 2.5 million people forced from their homes in
Darfur and still under attack from government-backed
janjaweed militia.
"Genocide is a crime of intention — we don't need to
wait until these 2.5 million die," he told The
Associated Press.
"The
genocide is ongoing," he added, saying systematic
rape was a key element of the campaign.
"Seventy-year-old women, 6-year-old girls are
raped," he said...
- Mike Corder
The Associated Press
July 14, 2008
See also:
Rape is a way of life for
Darfur's women
- CNN
June 19, 2008
LibertadLatina
Our special section on the
crisis of genocide in Darfur, Sudan
LibertadLatina
Commentary
As
human and women's rights activists, we strongly
applaud the action of prosecutor
Luis Moreno-Ocampo at the
International Criminal Court in the Hague in
charging
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with
master-minding genocide.
We wish
Moreno-Ocampo
well in his efforts to arrest
and try al-Bashir. At the very least, al-Bashir
will not be travelling abroad very much for fear of
facing arrest.
Those who suffered through genocides where no
justice was ever given, such as the victims of the
1980s and 1990s mass murders of mass rapes of Mayan
peoples in Guatemala, also deserve their day in the
Hague for what was done to them.
Genocide, and the rape of
almost every female, from children through
elderly women in Mayan Guatemala went almost
completely unpunished by international legal action.
Those acts were no less heinous than the terrible
genocide and mass rape facing Darfur, Sudan today.
In both cases, justice cannot come soon enough.
End impunity now!
-
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
July 9, 2008
Added July 9, 2008
Sudan
Sudan fury at possible
genocide charge
International
Criminal Court may seek arrest of Sudan's president
The U.N. estimates 2.5 million have been forced
from their homes in Darfur.
Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has scheduled a
news conference Monday, just after he is expected to
filed the warrant with the court.
The Sudanese ambassador to the United Nations told
CNN said Friday that the ICC has indicated to
Sudanese officials that al-Bashir may be charged
over the five-year campaign of violence in the
country's Darfur region...
- CNN
July 11, 2008
Guatemala
Presentan estudio sobre
femicidio en San Marcos
CERIGUA Releases
Study on Press Coverage of Femicide in San Marcos
The
study "An Analysis of Press Coverage of Violence
Against Women" during 2007 was released to
journalists and civil society representatives from
San Marcos
department [state], which reported that during the
first half of last year the phenomenon of femicide
claimed the lives of 272 women.
The
study, by the Center for Informative Reporting
About Guatemala (CERIGUA), which is dedicated to
raising awareness about [femicide and human rights],
revealed that last year 394 women were murdered
during 2007, without arousing any serious interest
on the part of the mass media to provide the public
with analysis of the causes, a variety of news
sources or dignified treatment of the victims in
their news coverage.
According to the study, the main characteristics of
press stories about female murders involved
sensational-ism and yellow journalism, the lightness
with which they treated the subject, and a lack of
effort to raise awareness about the causes of
femicide and current trends.
The
study noted that it is important to mention the
victim's profession and contributions in society,
and to present statements from those who knew them,
as a way to reclaim the dignity of these women's
lives.
According to the World Summit on the Information
Society (WSIS) held in Geneva in 2003, the press
must be guided by the principles of equality and non
discrimination towards women in its coverage...
-
CERIGUA
Guatemalan Human Rights News
July. 12, 2008
California, USA
ICE mounts outdoor ad campaign
to raise awareness about human trafficking
"Hidden in plain
sight" is theme of displays in San Diego and six
other U.S. cities
San
Diego - As part of it's ongoing effort to raise
public awareness about the plight of human
trafficking victims in the United States, U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has
launched an outdoor advertising campaign featuring
billboards and transit shelter signs in seven major
cities across the country, including San Diego.
Posters,
bearing the slogan "Hidden in Plain Sight," were
erected last month at 15 transit shelters throughout
the greater San Diego area. The goal of the campaign
is to alert the public about the existence of human
trafficking in communities nationwide. In addition
to San Diego, the human trafficking billboards and
transit shelter signs are being displayed in Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Chicago, Baltimore
and New York City. Additional outdoor displays are
planned for Houston, Miami and Washington, D.C.
"ICE is
asking for the public's assistance to help us
recognize and identify the victims of modern-day
slavery who are in our midst," said Miguel Unzueta,
special agent in charge for ICE investigations in
San Diego. "These victims are domestic servants,
sweat shop employees, sex workers and others lured
here by the promise of prosperity, then forced to
work without the ability to leave their situation.
ICE is committed to giving trafficking victims the
help they need to come forward, so we can put an end
to this reprehensible form of modern day slavery...
-
U.S. ICE
July. 13, 2008
Colorado, USA
Police Looking For Sex Assault
Suspect
Denver police say they are looking
for the person who sexually assaulted a woman who
was walking along the Lakewood Gulch Trail.
Police said the assault happened
Tuesday night around 1 a.m. in the area of 13th
Avenue and Decatur Street.
Officers said a Hispanic man
assaulted a woman, and then ran away.
He is descried as between 22 and 29
years old, about 5 feet tall and between 110 and 125
pounds.
- The Denver Channel
July 9, 2008
Virginia, USA
Composite of Suspect in [City
of] Sterling Sex Assault
Loudoun County, Virginia-
Investigators have released a composite sketch of a
suspect in an attempted sexual assault that occurred
Monday night in Sterling, VA.
A Loudoun Sheriff’s Deputy was in the
area of North Ithaca Road and North Ithaca Court
around 9 PM when she heard a woman scream. The
deputy went to investigate and observed a man
assaulting a woman. The man fled from the area and
the deputy gave chase. A perimeter was established
and a canine unit was called to the scene. The
suspect was not located.
The victim told authorities she was
walking home when the suspect grabbed her and
attempted to sexually assault her. The suspect is
described as a dark skinned Hispanic male, 5’5”
tall, 170 pounds
-
Fox 5 - Washington, DC
July. 13, 2008
Florida, USA
Police have arrested a man
they are calling a serial rapist.
At a press conference
Thursday afternoon, Miami Beach Police announced the
capture of 29-year-old Arturo Soto and asked the
public if anyone out there may have been victimized
by this same man. So far they think he is
responsible for at least two rapes and one attempted
rape.
Police apprehended Soto
Wednesday night after an attempted sexual battery.
The chef at the Maya Tapas and Grill restaurant,
near where the latest attack occurred, said graphic
surveillance video outside the restaurant, which
police have confiscated as evidence, looked like
something out of a horror movie.
Police said Soto
reportedly lured a woman into an alley at 14th
Street and Collins Avenue where he punched her
bloody and fled on foot after he became nervous.
Police officers caught
up with him soon after, and, authorities said, he
confessed to the crime. During the course of the
questioning of Soto, authorities determined he is
also a suspect in the November 2006 rape of a woman
behind the Presidential Hotel, located at 1423
Collins Avenue, also in an alley.
Police added that he is
also a suspect in the more recent sexual battery of
a woman who was visiting from out of town. This
attack occurred on June 24, outside a Miami Beach
parking garage, again in an alley, near 919 Collins
Avenue...
- WSVN
July. 11, 2008
Nevada, USA
[Undocumented] immigrant
convicted of assaulting girl gets 57 more months
A deported
[Undocumented] immigrant who returned to the United
States and sexually assaulted a young girl will be
spending another 57 months in federal prison.
Sergio Hugo Hernandez,
31, of Las Vegas, received that sentence Friday on
top of a sentence of 10 years to life that he
received in state prison for assaulting the girl,
said Gregory A. Brower, U.S. Attorney for the
District of Nevada.
Officials said Hernandez
-- already convicted of carjacking and use of a
deadly weapon in California -- was deported from the
country on July 29, 2003. He then was found in the
U.S. on April 6, 2007, during an investigating into
the sexual assault of a girl under age 14.
Hernandez was convicted
Jan. 9 of two felonies tied to the sexual assault of
the girl. In February, he pleaded guilty to being a
deported alien found unlawfully in the U.S., and
today was sentenced to the 57 additional months in
prison.
The case was
investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement and Henderson police.
- The Las Vegas Sun
July. 11, 2008
[Undocumented man] denies
raping 14-year-old relative
A man accused of raping
a 14-year-old girl denies that the alleged victim is
his relative.
Speaking through an
interpreter in Floyd Circuit Court, Jenrry Yovany
Zavala, 19, claimed the girl in question is actually
his girlfriend, but a family member says
otherwise...
Zavala has been charged
with rape, a class B felony, criminal confinement, a
class D felony, and contributing to the delinquency
of a minor, a class A misdemeanor. He faces six to
20 years in prison if convicted of rape and six
months to three years if convicted of criminal
confinement.
Jony Zavala, the
suspect’s brother, said he has legal custody of the
victim. He reportedly called police when she went
missing and led them to where his brother was
staying near East 18th Street in New Albany.
Jony claims that when he
went looking for the girl, a man told him that
Jenrry had been trying to “sell” her as a
prostitute.
...According to the
affidavit, the alleged victim said that Jenrry
kidnapped her, forced her to have sex with him
multiple times and threatened to kill her. Police
found her hiding in a closet...
“It has been very
painful for my family, especially my mom,” Jony
said. “But if he has the guts to kidnap a
14-year-old girl, what else could he do?”
Jenrry is being held in
the Floyd County Jail on $150,000 bail. He will have
to pay $15,000 in cash to be released. Judge Cody
issued a no-contact order with the alleged victim.
- Matt Thacker
News and Tribune
July. 11, 2008
|
Recent
Event
Thursday, July 10th
Washington, DC
The Profits of
Pimping:
Abolishing Sex Trafficking In The
United States
|
Added July 9, 2008
Tennessee, USA
Man Sentenced For Sex
Trafficking Of Adults and Juveniles
Washington, DC - The Department of
Justice, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
announced that Juan Mendez of Nashville, Tenn., was
sentenced on June 27, 2008 to 50 years in prison to
be followed by 10 years of supervised release for
sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion and sex
trafficking of a juvenile. He was also ordered to
pay $100,000 in restitution to his victims.
Mendez pleaded guilty on Dec. 13,
2007, to two counts of child sex trafficking and sex
trafficking by force, fraud and coercion. Mendez
admitted to fraudulently luring two young girls,
aged 13 and 17, to Tennessee with the intent of
forcing them into prostitution. Mendez further
admitted to threatening the victims, physically and
verbally, in order to coerce them into
prostitution...
“This defendant lured young girls to
this country with the promise of jobs working in a
restaurant, then used physical and psychological
abuse to force them to work in brothels across the
South,” said Grace Chung Becker, Acting Assistant
Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “We
hope that this sentence will give a new sense of
hope to the young victims in this case, whose lives
were tragically affected by the defendant’s criminal
acts.”
- U.S. Dept. of Justice
Press Release
June 30, 2008
Florida, USA
Errata
Our updating of a recent
story on the alleged beheading of a trafficking
victim
LibertadLatina
apologizes to its readers for the fact that we
inadvertently published a story that had previously
been
reported in the Bradenton Herald in Florida, yet was
later discovered to be false.
During 7
years of reporting on human trafficking and
exploitation issues affecting the Latino/a,
Afro-descendent and indigenous commu-nities in the
Americas, this is the first case of an apparently
falsified story, from an otherwise credible news
source.
On June 24th we spend many hours tracking down the
official Florida House of Representatives video tape of the
hearing where the Florida Attorney General's office
publicly testified about the alleged beheading of a
trafficked Mexican girl. They too were mislead
by the Bradenton Herald story from March 11, 2008,
which, the paper says, has now been retracted.
Read the details at this link.
-
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
July 9, 2008
Georgia, USA
Feds Say Women, Girls Forced
Into Prostitution
Atlanta - Five men are accused of
forcing young women and girls from Mexico to work as
prostitutes in metro Atlanta...
"We believe that the men would go to
Mexico and befriend or seduce the young women tell
them they were going to be their boyfriends, once
they started dating in Mexico they'd get them to
come to the U.S.," said Assistant U.S. Attorney
Susan Coppedge.
...The men lured at least 10 victims
from Mexico into Metro Atlanta...
Federal authorities say the victims,
including four under 18, were lured to the U.S. with
promises of jobs or romance, then held in suburban
homes and made to perform sex acts with up to 30 men
a night at $25 apiece...
"Immigration and Customs Enforcement
was the lead agency and they had help from Gwinnett
and Bartow County local enforcement who saw these
things going on in their community and helped
conduct surveillance of the men taking women into
various homes for prostitution," said Coppedge.
Named in a 31-count indictment were
34-year-old Amador Cortes-Meza; 31-year-old Juan
Cortes-Meza; 25-year-old Francisco Cortes-Meza, and
21-year-old Raul Cortes-Meza, all of Mexico and
living in Norcross, and 69-year-old Edison Wagner
Rosa Tort of Uruguay and living in Cartersville.
-
WAGA - Fox
July. 8, 2008
Argentina
Dos chicas desaparecieron y
temen que las tengan tratantes de blancas
Two Girls Disappear
and are Feared to be Sex Trafficking Victims
Santa Fe - Daiana Graciela Valdez,
age, 16, and Gisela Romero, age 22, are feared to
have been kidnapped by sex traffickers during the
month of June [2008].
Daiana disappeared on June 20th. On
that date she sent two text messages to a male
friend, pleading for help. This together with other
information lead authorities to believe that Daiana
was the victim of a 'typical' sex trafficking kidnap
operation.
Gisela has a mild mental disability,
with the capacities of a 15-year-old. She had not
been seen since June 13th. She left without clothing
and without her child, leading police to suspect
that she too was the victim of sex traffickers.
Both cases were reported to police,
and Argentina's Specialized Unit for the Prevention
and Fight Against the Crime of Trafficking is
investigating.
Daiana was able to send three text
messages after her kidnapping. In the first, she
told a friend that she had been forced into a black
car, had been taken to the north, and that she had
been beaten and was being held in a room. Later,
Daiana send another message asking for help, saying
that she was going to die. Later yet, she
communicated with her sister, saying that she was
locked in a room and blindfolded. The cell phone
used was not her own. It later showed up in a
package that was found by authorities in the
capitol, Buenos Aires.
Gisela left her home on June 13th to
go to a tourist area. She left her identification
and her 2-year-old daughter at home. Two years
earlier, Gisela had disappeared from home, and
returned pregnant. Her parents never found out where
she had been, Her mother fears that she may be with
the same people again. Her mother is sure that her
current disappearance was not voluntary.
- La Capital
Argentina
July 4, 2008
Uruguay
Prostitución infantil en Salto
Child prostitution in
the resort city of Salto
Dr. Silvia Alvez , of the Committee
for the Eradication of Child Labor (CETI) in Salto
has announced that that organized child sex
trafficking networks are active in their city.
Dr. Alvez, who is also a councilwoman
in the National Party, reported that child sexual
exploitation had first been reported during a
MERCOSUR (Southern Latin American Common Market)
organized workshop on trafficking held in 2006.
The range of ages of the victims was
between 10 and 12. Dr. Alvez stated that child sex
trafficking is not a partisan political issue, and
the nation needs to 'put its shirt on' and work to
strengthen legal controls and education about the
problem.
A TurísticaRadio reporter travelled
to a thermal spa in Termas del Arapey to interview
neighbors [of an alleged child prostitution center].
The residents interviewed, angry and
indignant, denied that child prostitution was
occurring, and demanded that Dr. Alvez produce proof
of its existence.
-
Uruguay al Dia
July 4, 2008
Peru
Los dueños de un sauna tenían
cautivas a dos menores para ejercer el meretricio
The owners of a sauna
held two children captive in prostitution
Iquitos - Two Chinese immigrants to
Peru, Zhang Jun Hong, age 43, and Hao Zchenbin, 28,
have been arrested and charged with human
trafficking.
The two are owners of a sauna
business, and held two girls, ages 14 and 15,
against their will and forced them to engage in
massage parlor prostitution.
Jéssica Dávila Rojas, 36, and Gisela
Torres Vargas, 22, were also arrested, and were
charged with convincing the parents to hand over
custody of the girls to them, by using falsified
stories that the girls would work in good paying
jobs in the capitol city of Lima.
According to police, the two girls
called their families when they discovered that they
would be forced into prostitution. The families
alerted police, who came to their rescue at the
sauna.
Those arrested face 15 years in
prison for the crime of human trafficking.
-
24 Horas Libre
July 3, 2008
Washington State, USA
$1 million bail for rape
suspect
Bellingham - A Whatcom Superior Court
judge set bail at $1 million Tuesday for rape
suspect Hector Serano Salinas.
Salinas, 36, is charged with three
counts of first degree rape while armed with a
deadly weapon. He is accused of raping a woman in
Maritime Heritage Park early Monday morning.
According to charging documents read
by Whatcom County Deputy Prosecutor Jeff Sawyer,
police officers were flagged down by a woman at 2
a.m. Monday near the post office at 315 Prospect St.
The woman reported she had been raped at knifepoint
at her campsite - a sleeping bag on a nearby cement
bench - three times by a man she described as
Hispanic and wearing a black stocking cap.
The victim told police she was
dragged down the stairs into Maritime Heritage Park
and raped again...
-
The Bellingham Herald
July 2, 2008
Hawaii, USA
Big Island Man Wanted for Sex
Assault on a Minor
Big Island police are renewing their
request for the public's help in locating a
28-year-old man wanted for the sexual assault of a
minor in Puna. Mauro Martin Ortiz of Hawaiian
Paradise Park is described as Hispanic, 5-foot-6,
about 180 pounds with brown eyes and brown hair.
Ortiz may be in the company of
19-year Nohealani Cabarloc, whom detectives would
also like to contact.
-
KGMB
Waikiki
July 1, 2008
Added July9, 2008
Mexico
Femicidio en Ciudad
Juarez:
Para
mi, es indignante ver como mi gobierno justificando su ineptitud, le
resta importancia a este tema, y le resta valor a las personas
involucradas en el, haciendo aparecer siempre a las victimas como
mujeres de poca moral, problematicas, prostitutas etc.
[Letters
from the War Front:] A Woman Who Fled Ciudad
Juarez, the Epicenter of Mexican Femicide,
Comments of the Realities that Women Face in
Mexico...
I am
indignant seeing how my government justifies its ineptitude, always
detracting from the importance of this crisis, and detracting from the
value of its victims. They always make the victims appear to be women
of low morals, ‘problematic’ women, and prostitutes.
- Teresa Ortiz
Letter sent-to and
Published-by:
LibertadLatina
July. 8, 2008
Added July 6, 2008
Mexico
Es realmente triste para mi el
ver la manera tan ligera en que se trata este tema
Yo, soy una mujer de 35 anos,
nacida en la ciudad de chihuahua, pero radicada en
cd. Juarez por 18 anos, me vi en la necesidad de
emigrar a estados unidos, no buscando el sueno
americanos sino buscando un lugar justo donde mis
derechos y los de mis hijos fueran escuchados y
respetados.
Me canse de ver tanta injusticia
y de comprobar dia a dia que aunque mi pais mexico
es hermoso y presume de tener hombres recios y
protectores, no es asi.
Bastantes de nuestros hombres
mexicanos, se estan encargando de hacer de nuestro
hermoso pais un campo de guerra para nuestras
mujeres y nuestros ninos, porque en vez de
protegernos nos abusan y las autoridades parecen
estar ciegas en estas situaciones.
Es realmente preocupante que
mujeres como yo, tengamos que dejar atras nuestra
familia, nustras amistades, trabajo y todo lo que a
lo largo de nuestras vidas hemos construido, por uir
de quienes nos debieran proteger, hombres, gobierno
y leyes.
Gracias a dios he sido de las
afortunadas que pude rescatar mi dignidad, mi
libertad y mi vida, por eso amo tambien este pais
que me ha cobijado y me a acogido como el mio no lo
hizo.
A
letter from the War Zone: "It's really sad for
me to see how [the crisis for women is Mexico]
is taken so lightly."
"I am a 35-year-old
woman who was born in the city of Chihuahua, who has
lived in Juarez City 18 years. I see the need to
emigrate to the United States, not to seek the
American dream, but to find a place where my rights
and those of my children will be heard and
respected.
I am tired of seeing so
much injustice, and of seeing proof from day to day
that although my country is beautiful, and Mexico
boasts that is men are upright and act as protectors
[of women], it is not true. Quite a few of our
Mexican men are taking it upon themselves to turn
Mexico into a war zone targeting our women and
children. Instead of protecting us they
abuse us, and the authorities act like they are
blind to these situations.
It is really troubling
that women like me have to leave behind our family,
our friends, our work and everything else that we
have constructed in our lives, to flee from those
who should protect us: men, the government and the
law.
Thanks to God, I have
been one of the fortunate ones, who could rescue my
dignity, my liberty and my life. For this reason I
love this country [The United States], that has
covered me and held me as my country has failed to
do."
- Teresa Ortiz
Letter sent-to and
Published-by:
LibertadLatina
July. 4, 2008
See also:
LibertadLatina
Our special section
of the crisis of the mass murder of women and girls
with impunity in Ciudad Juarez (Juarez City), Mexico
|
Mexico
Many of the 80,000 Mexican children who cross from Mexico into the U.S. alone,
as undocumented immigrants, are fleeing abuse at home, or are escaping from
child prostitution rings. As such, they
would possibly qualify for permission to stay in the United States.
These children would be able to avail themselves of this opportunity if U.S.
Border Patrol officers would provide them with the appropriate interview form,
as federal law requires. Instead, these minors are typically deported less
than 24 hours after their arrests.
...Thousands of Mexican and Central American
children flee northward into the U.S. each year to escape child prostitution...
Nugent explained how in Mexico there exists terrible child trafficking in the
area of Acapulco, Guerrero, and that many now call this region "the new Bangkok"
of child sex tourism.
Nugent also emphasized that Tijuana [on the U.S. border
with San Diego County] has also become an zone controlled by powerful child
prostitution networks.
Many children [enslaved in prostitution] from Tijuana are trying
to flee to San
Diego[, California].
According to Nugent
70 percent of children who migrate and come to the
Office of
Refugees in the United States have suffered some sort of trauma from violence
or sexual exploitation...
[Expanded
Translation]
Georgina Olson
Excélsior
July 3, 2008
Also regarding the work of Christopher Nugent:
Missing in America: 8,000 immigrant children
The Examiner
Washington, DC
Feb. 1, 2007
|
Added July 5, 2008
Bolivia
UNICEF: Indígenas bolivianos entregan a sus hijos a hacendados en calidad de
servidumbre
UNICEF: Indigenous Bolivians deliver their children to landowners as bonded
servants
Native peoples from the Chaco region and eastern Bolivia deliver their children
to the owners of agricultural plantations on condition that they can study.
However, they are made to work beyond their capacity, the work harms their
attendance in school, and they are not paid for their work, according to a study
by the United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF).
Children belonging to ethnic Guarani ethnicity are the ones who are subjected
to this condition of servitude.
In Beni, indigenous families working on cattle ranches and
children are handed
over to the landowners bonded for life.
The conditions of poverty have also caused indigenous people to migrate to
cities. There, children engage in informal work, devoted to washing cars,
shining shoes, and selling sweets and bread on the streets.
The most serious forms of exploitation, are at work in the harvest of sugar
cane. Adolescents and women are called "quarters" and are seen as helpers in
lighter tasks, receiving a quarter of the wage of an adult. These groups are
also included children under 12 years accompanying their parents...
UNICEF says in its
report that it is necessary to: design public policies and
implement programs aimed at quantifying the rate of labor law violation relapses
involving indigenous child population; develop a
coordinated and joint work process between the
main institutions responsible for child
protection; and give Indigenous infants better
conditions for their development and integration
into the educational system.
UNICEF argues that in Bolivia 118,000 children aged between 7 and 13 years
of age are working. This represents 8 percent of the child population.
Some 28.2 percent of adolescents between 14 and 17 years (206,000 youth)
usually work. Overall, 10.2 percent of the economically active population (EAP)
of Bolivia is made up of children and adolescents.
-
ElDiario.net
July 3, 2008
Argentina

Rescatan a adolescente vendida en USD 800 a red de prostitución
Sixteen-Year-Old is Rescued After Being Sold to Sex Traffickers for US$800.
A 16-year-old teenager who had been sold to a prostitution network for 2,500
pesos (about 800 dollars) was rescued on Thursday in Misiones
Province, in
northeastern Argentina, according to the Gendarmerie (border police).
When her trafficker attempted to take her to Buenos Aires, police arrested the
47-year-old Brazilian citizen who was charged with "fraud in the trafficking of
a child for exploitation or commercial sex."
The nightmare for the victim had started in the Misiones town of San Pedro,
where she was sold for 2,500 pesos to a sex trafficking network.
Human trafficking is a crime not released in Argentina and sentences ranging
from four to ten years in prison.
Last week authorities revealed another case from Misiones, it was revealed the
case of a teenager aged 15, also a native of Misiones, rescued in Brazil after
being forced into prostitution for 3 years.
The Misiones Coalition to Stop the Trafficking and
the Commercial Sexual
Exploitation of Children reported in 2007 that at least 550 minors disappeared
in Argentina, and were victims of prostitution rings.
The Coalition also alleged in court that officials from the National Directorate
for Migration were in collusion [with criminals] in cases of the trafficking of
children and adolescents, especially from Paraguay.
Several
non-govern-mental organizations (NGOs) have pointed to the Triple Border region between Argentina, Brazil
and Paraguay, as a [lawless] territory where trafficking and recruitment of
children and adolescents, who are promised an escape from extreme poverty, is
rampant.
-
Univision
July 4, 2008
See also:
LibertadLatina
The crisis of sexual exploitation
facing women and children in Argentina
Dominican Republic,
The Caribbean
Miles de dominicanas se prostituyen en islas las caribeñas, según un estudio
Thousands of Dominican Women Engage in Prostitution in Caribbean
Region
Thousands of Dominican women, some of them undocumented, work as prostitutes
in the [English and French speaking] Caribbean region, where they are discriminated against and do not
have access to services, according to a study conducted by a local
organization.
The investigation was carried out by the Centre for Integral Orientation and
Investigation (COIN), whose director, Santo Rosario, stated that some 20,000
Dominicans live on these islands, and 50% of them lived from prostitution.
Some do it by choice, but others are victims of trafficking networks, said
Rosario.
The seven
nations involved are French Guyana, Antigua, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique,
Trinidad and Haiti.
The study entitled "Sex Work, Trafficking and HIV / AIDS", reveals an increase
in female migration to these Caribbean nations, and a close link between poverty,
gender inequality and high-risk female migration.
According to research, "these factors act as a complex network that lead women
to fall, often, into the trap of smuggling and human trafficking."
The study also reveals the existence of networks of smugglers and traffickers who act
as intermediaries to meet "the demand for commercial sex in the region" stated
Rosario.
Rosario: "The Impunity in which they are moved and the lack of protection for victims and
their families prevent these abuses from being reported."
Rosario explained that many of these women
are face violence, sexual
abuse and exploitation by their traffickers, employers and clients. Some of these
women are hopeful that they will receive support in resolving their
undocumented legal status, and will be able to improve their economic situation.
However, "the strictness of the laws of migration in these countries, far from
helping solve the problems their problems as migrants, has made them invisible,
facilitating the smuggling and trafficking of persons and the violation of their
human rights."
Rosario called on the governments involved to take measures to alleviate the
situation, including by developing training and development programs for women,
so that they will be able to support themselves.
-
EFE
July 4, 2008
Mexico, Central America
Abusos en la frontera sur
Central and South American Migrants Face Terrible Abuses
Along Mexico's Southern Border
Transit through Mexico for most immigrants from Central and South
America is a
living hell of robbery, extortion, threats and harassment on the part of
individuals and authorities. "
"In Mexico, these migrants cease to be people and become a commodity, a 'mine'
of profits," notes Catholic priest Alejandro Solalinde, age 63, who manages a shelter in
town Ixtepec, in the southern state of Oaxaca, one of the most commonly used by
passing migrants.
Solalinde: "The mafia and the authorities come in and abuse
these migrants because
they see them as less. They call them 'cachuco,' a word that translates as 'dirty
Central American."
The federal National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), humanitarian groups and the
consuls of the Central American countries have been complaining for over a
decade of abuses suffered by migrants in Mexico. The authorities recognize the
problem and are working to fix it, but few changes can be seen. In Ixtepec,
where there is a transshipment center for freight trains running from the border
with Guatemala northward into Mexico. Solalinde states until
March of 2008, reports of kidnappings, robberies and harassment against immigrants transiting with
the aim of reaching United States were commonplace.
But since April, after the National Migration Institute (INM) suspended
its monitoring operations in Ixtepec, reports of allegation of crimes fell. "Draw
your own conclusions" said Solinde. The Institute decided to curb its
monitoring efforts in Ixtepec, and
after March 31st, about 90 Central Americans were beaten and harassed by Mexican
Navy personnel in that area, an event that is still under
investigation.
Before arriving in Ixtepec, immigrants who travel by
train have typically suffered assaults at the hands of criminals and gang members,
and have been subjected to extortion and robbery at the hands of policemen, military personnel
and immigration (INM) officers,
explained Solalinde. "But now, the mafia is having a
field day."
"I've just had a meeting with delegates of the INM and they explained that
their operations would resume soon. They asked me to not say anything. I replied that surveillance
is good, but I shall not remain silent about abuses. That is unacceptable."
When the train stops in Ixtepec, Solalinde and his colleagues come to ask
immigrants who are not separated from family to go with him to his hostel, where
he gives them food, medicine and accommodation for one day. The aim is to
prevent passengers from being subjected to assaults, rapes and arrests...
[Expanded
Translation]
-
Iberarte
July 3, 2008
El Salvador
Vendedores retiran pornografía infantil
Street Vendors Pull Child Pornography from Sale
Street vendors from downtown San Salvador announced yesterday that
they would
withdraw pornographic films, and in particular child pornography, from sale and
exhibition.
"We will do this as a contribution to society. It is a show of our complete
rejection of the sale and reproduction of child pornography, and the display of all
kinds of pornography, "said Pedro Julio Hernandez, who is a leader of the
traders.
The decision was taken by more than 30 organizations of informal vendors due to
"concerns that they have generated" in the news about the rape of children.
"The sale of child pornography is absolutely prohibited," Hernandez reiterated.
However, he noted that traders are "free" to sell their product, when customers
seek the videos or posters.
"People determine what kind of things you see.
We can not expose our
children, who are going to buy a children's movie as 'Finding Nemo' and have
them run into something that is not suitable for them," said Hernandez...
-
La Prens Grafica
San Salvador
July 4, 2008
Puerto Rico
ICE nabs Puerto Rican man for sexually enticing a minor
Bayamon - A 43-year-old man from Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, was arrested here today
after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigation revealed
that he was sexually enticing a girl who he thought was 13-years-old.
Angel Cosme-Martinez was arrested by ICE agents in the parking lot of Plaza Rio
Hondo after he arranged the meeting during the sexually explicit
conversations...
"This arrest is a stern reminder of the consequences awaiting those who use the
Internet to sexually exploit innocent children," said Manuel Oyola Torres,
special agent in charge of ICE's office of investigations in Puerto Rico. "Some
predators mistakenly believe the anonymity of cyberspace shields them from
scrutiny, when in fact, their use of computers and the Internet have given us
new tools in our enforcement efforts to protect children from online predators."
This case will be prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Jenifer
Hernandez.
-
U.S. ICE
July 3, 2008
Added July 4, 2008
Spain, Bolivia
Acusado de abusar niña
boliviana alega relación con menores es habitual en
país
Sexual enslaver of child seeks
acquittal because behavior is normal in his country
A Bolivian migrant to Spain, referred
to here as Walter F.F., faces charges in a Barcelona
criminal court for ongoing sexual abuse of an
11-year-old girl.
In 2005 'when the victim was 11,
'Walter' obtained permission from the girl's parents
to take her from Bolivia to the Cataluña region of
Spain. Walter had told that girl and her family that
she was to work as the nanny for his then expectant
girlfriend...
Walter began to force the victim to
have sex with him...
Walter faces 11 years in prison for
sexually abusing the victim.
Walter and his defense attorney argue
that Walter should be pardoned for his acts, because
he did not know about the statutory rape laws in
Spain, and, he asserts, having a sexual relationship
with a girl who has reached puberty is normal in his
native country, Bolivia.
The prosecutor, on the other hand,
believes that Walter is guilty of ongoing child
sexual abuse and exhibitionism, and has asked the
judge in the case to sentence Walter to 11 years in
prison...
Two former partners of the accused,
who are Bolivian women, have stated that they did
not see any sexual abuse of the girl. They have both
told authorities that indeed, it is not strange that
a girl aged 11 has sexual intercourse because she is
considered to be a woman at the time of her first
menstruation...
[Extended
translation]
- Actualidad / Terra
Spain
July 1, 2008
Texas, USA
Police: Man Exposes Self To
Child In Store
Houston - Police are searching for a
man who exposed himself to a child inside a
southwest Houston store...
Houston police said the man
approached an 11-year-old girl as she shopped with
relatives at the Marshall's store in the 8100 block
of South Gessner Drive on April 26.
The man left the store after he
exposed himself to the child, investigators said.
Detectives said the man is
Hispanic...
- KPRC
Houston
July 3, 2008
Spain
Spain says new European Union
immigration law "necessary"
Madrid - Spain believes the
newly-approved EU law on the repatriation of
undocumented immigrants is "necessary" at a time
when unemployment is on the rise in the country, a
top official said Wednesday.
Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria
Teresa Fernandez de la Vega told the press that "we
are going to hire less immigrants" as the total job
opportunities continue to decline....
The European Parliament approved the
"Return Directive" on June18, ordering the expulsion
of undocumented immigrants in Europe.
If they do not leave the bloc within
a period of seven to 30 days, they may face up to 18
months in jail.
The law, which could come into force
in 2010, has drawn widespread and strong criticism
from Latin America.
According to Spain's official
statistics, some 424,500 people lost their jobs
during the one-year period starting June 2007, and
the hardest hit sectors are the construction
industry, agriculture and service industry, which
provide jobs to the largest percentage of
undocumented immigrants.
- Xinhua
July 3, 2008
Added July 2, 2008
Florida, USA
Fla. holds 1st execution since
botched method
Starke - Florida on
Tuesday carried out its first execution since a
botched lethal injection procedure prompted the
state to revamp the way it conducts capital
punishment.
Mark Dean Schwab, who
was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing
11-year-old [Junny Rios-Martinez in 1991], died at
6:15 p.m...
Schwab raped and killed
Junny a month after he was released early from a
prison sentence he got for raping a 13-year-old boy.
The case led to Florida's Junny Rios-Martinez Act of
1992, which prohibits sex offenders from early
release from prison or getting credit for good
behavior.
Schwab stalked the boy
after seeing his photo in a newspaper for winning a
kite contest...
-
The Associated Press
July 1, 2008
California, USA
...A
statutory rape case from the county's recent
history has the potential to alter...
immigration law
The U.S. Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeal heard the case of Juan Elias
Estrada-Espinoza in Pasadena on Wednesday.
Amador County - …[Five years ago Juan Elias]
Estrada-Espinoza was a 20-year-old... grocery
clerk. The Mexican national had relocated to the
states with his family in 1992 at the age of 12,
attaining permanent residence status six years
later.
In
July 2003, Estrada-Espinoza had an emergency
protective order filed against him when S.A.
[his under-age girlfriend and mother of his
child] complained he inappropriately touched
her…
Around this time, two other women had filed
complaints with the sheriff's office against
Estrada-Espinoza. They said he committed sexual
acts when they were too drunk to protest. One
was a 17-year-old girl…
[Estrada-Espinoza has been in federal custody
for 3 years on immigration charges.] In that
time, the American Civil Liberties Union filed
multiple lawsuits in federal court protesting
the government's ability to incarcerate immig-rants
in detention centers for prolonged periods of
time while their deportation cases are heard…
This January, the ACLU took its case to the
Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Pasadena…
At issue is whether
statutory rape, even when it's consensual,
constitutes "sexual abuse of a minor" and should
therefore be considered an aggravated felony
worthy of deportation.
…A favorable ruling could set a precedent that
requires the reevaluation of potentially
thousands of other deportations, as well as
those currently serving prison sentences for
illegal reentry into this country when statutory
rape was the underlying offense for which they
were deported.
…There will be tremendous repercussions in
immigration [law]…
- Amador Ledger Dispatch
June 27, 2008
LibertadLatina
Commentary
The age of sexual consent in Mexico City and in a
number of Mexican states is 12. Similar laws exist
across Latin America. Men who migrate bring
that cultural dynamic with them to the United
States.
The U.S. population does have the right to say
"well, we have laws against underage sexual
relationships with adult men and women." For
newly arrived immigrants, it is certainly required
that they obey the rules as they exist today in the
U.S.
These problems are complicated further when the men
involved believe in sexist machismo, and feel that
it is their macho right to engage in
'unequal' underage relationships, with impunity,
regardless of what U.S. laws say.
The collective social sensibilities of all people in
the U.S. need to be consulted first, in regard to whether
or not we want adult men to engage in this behavior
simply because it is their custom in another
country. Do mothers, be they Latina or not,
really want adult men asking 'Maria' to the middle
school prom??
I don't think so!
-
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
July 1, 2008
See also:
Letter to the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children about conditions
in the city of Gaithersburg, Maryland
"I see adult Latino men with 11 and 12 year old
girls all the time in the greater Washington, DC
area. While these relation-ships are 'acceptable' in
much of Latin America, the mothers of these girls
are NOT AGREEABLE to having the adult Central
American (and other men) in their poor neighborhoods
run around after their 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17
year old daughters after school while they, the
hard-working parents (often single mothers), have to
work two jobs and cannot defend their children
during and after school hours.
And when the local police authorities do not act
with the same energy that the case of a young middle
class American female would invoke from them, these
Latina mothers are disgusted. These parents come to
the conclusion that the police and the government do
not care, an experience that they are familiar with
in their home countries..."
-
Chuck Goolsby
Dec. 5, 1999
Rhode Island, USA
Suspect in kidnap-ping,
rape to remain [incarcerated]
Providence - Marco Riz, a Guatemalan immigrant
accused of kidnapping and raping a woman at
knifepoint in Roger Williams Park, waived his
right to a bail hearing yesterday in District
Court...
Riz
is charged with kidnapping a 30-year-old woman
on June 8 outside a Warwick supermarket and
raping her in Roger Williams Park on the
Providence-Cranston border. A few days later, a
task force of Providence and Warwick police,
immigration officers, state police and federal
marshals captured Riz on Linwood Avenue in the
West End of Providence.
The
case has become a lightning rod for state
residents opposed to illegal immigrants living
in Rhode Island. Governor Carcieri entered the
fray last week and blamed the Providence police
for releasing him twice last year after he was
arrested on drunken-driving and domestic-assault
charges.
At
the time, there was a federal deportation order
in effect that called for Riz to be sent back to
Guatemala...
- Zachary Malinowski
Providence Journal
July. 1, 2008
Added July 1, 2008
Indiana, USA
Police seek Indianapolis sex
assault suspect
Indianapolis - Police
released a sketch Monday of a man who reportedly
abducted and assaulted an Indianapolis teenager.
...The 18-year-old
victim told police that a man approached her as she
walked near East 42nd Street and North Post Road.
The victim said the man
grabbed her and forced her into a red SUV, then
drove her to an industrial park... Once there, the
victim told police the man punched her in the face
numerous times while he sexually assaulted her...
The suspect is described
as a Hispanic male, 30 to 35 years old...
- WTHR
June 30, 2008
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Added:
Feb. 08, 2010
Mexico
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.
I n 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
See also:
En Japón, de 3 a 4 mil
niñas mexicanas víctimas de ESCI
Afirma la experta Teresa Ulloa
Three to four thousand underage
indigenous girls from the poor states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero
and Mexico [state] have become victims of commercial sexual
exploitation of children (CSEC) in Japan.
Puebla city,
in Puebla state - Teresa Ulloa, Latin America and
Caribbean Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking of Women
(CATW) announced her estimates of the numbers of indigenous children
sex trafficked to Japan, and explained that traffickers trick the
victims using offers of thousands of dollars for their parents in
exchange for [obtaining permission] to take their daughters. The
parents are told that their girls are going to the United States to
work in fast food restaurant jobs.
Taking advantage of the condition of submission that Mexico's
indigenous communities are forced to live in, the traffickers take
their victims to Japan where they are prostituted and work as
geishas, a role that Asian women no-longer want to play because
today they have more decision-making power than in the past.
Ulloa said that before these victims from Japan are repatriated, the
home conditions of these girls must be investigated to assure that
they can be reintegrated without facing the risk of being sold or
sexually exploited again.
Ulloa noted that in the year 2002 the CATW helped to repatriate two
sisters, ages 8 and 10, who had been prostituted in a brothel in New
York. They were subjected to exploitation again, 15 days later,
because their family "had sold their daughters in exchange for two
goats and two cases of beer."
During her interview with CIMAC Noticias, Ulloa declared:
"the
subject [of child protection] is not on the national agenda.
Much attention is paid to drug trafficking, but the government
hasn't even realized that the same drug trafficking networks are
used for the [sex] trafficking of children, and that organized crime
regards this activity to be one of their most important businesses."
Nadia Altamirano Díaz
CIMAC Noticias
Dec. 12, 2008
See Also:
Human Rights Activists in
Mexico Under Attack
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
Railroaded by the
Legal Process for
Exposing Child Sex
Networks In Mexico
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
See also:
Ransacking of Longtime Women’s News Agency in
Mexico City Raises Concerns About Motives
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
See also:
Modern-Day Slavery in Mexico and the United
States
...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 31st,
2010, human rights organizations from across Guatemala presented an art
and photography exhibit to commemorate the 30th 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
See
also:
The Kansas City Star’s week-long human
trafficking series from December of 2009
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
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 t | | |