California, USA

Sexual predator tries to take 2 girls

A suspected sexual predator has been caught on tape and police are releasing the video in hopes of finding him before he strikes again.

Police say the suspect tried to abduct an 8-year-old girl last month on her way to school. He also tried the same thing in February with a 9-year-old girl.

In both cases, the victims were lured to apartment buildings where he tried to sexually assault them, but they were able to get away unharmed.

The suspect is described as a Hispanic man, 25 to 30 years old, 5 feet 6 inches, 170 pounds, with black spiked hair.

- Subha Ravindhran

KABC

Los Angeles

May 15, 2008

Texas, USA

Police report eight apartment assaults against women

Midland police said Wednesday they are now investigating eight separate assaults on female victims that have occurred at apartment complexes throughout the Tall City in the past month...

...Police have had a hard time trying to get a complete description of the man.

What they do have is he is a Hispanic male around 30 years of age between 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-9...

- Audrie Palmer

Midland Reporter-Telegram

May 15, 2008

Mexico

Soldados nos agreden: mujeres Me’phaa de La Montaña, Guerrero

Soldiers Subject Indigenous Women & Communities to Terror in Guerrero State

Fortina Cruz Ortega, of the Me`phaa ethnic group (members of the larger indigenous Tlapaneca tribe of the region called La Montaña in Guerrero state), joined with four other indigenous women... to denounce human rights abuses occurring in La Montaña... The group... gave testimony before the Indigenous Affairs Committee of the Chamber of Deputies...

Cruz Ortega: "We,

the women of the Me`phaa, live in everyday fear of leaving our homes, because military soldiers harass us... Many of our women have been raped by these soldiers, but they remain silent because if their husbands found out, they would get angry and leave them."

Cruz Ortega, the wife of Orlando Manzanares Lorenzo, also denounced the fact that her husband, as well as the husbands of the other four women present, had been falsely accused in the homicide of Alejandro Feliciano García, a police and military informant. Those detained include: Manuel Cruz Victoriano... who denounced having been forcibly sterilized by workers of the Secretary of Health; ... and Natalio Ortega Cruz and Romualdo Santiago Enedina, both... cousins of a woman named Inés, who... was raped by soldiers in 2002...

The wives of these prisoners declared that the only 'crime' their husbands are guilty of is that of having organized and protected their communities...

After the women concluded their statements at the press conference, Deputy Marcos Matías Alonso announced that the following day, the issue of the  Me`phaa leadership's unjust arrest would be presented to the Senate of the Republic by Senator Cuauhte-moc Sandoval, a member of the Permanent Commission...

- Sandra Torres Pastrana

CIMAC Noticias

Mexico City

May 8, 2008

- Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

Mexico

Exigen frenar explotación laboral de menores indígenas

Congress Demands an End to the Labor Exploitation of Indigenous Children

Approximately three million mostly indigenous children and adolescents face labor exploitation in Mexico due to the economic problems facing 80% of the population, and due to the customs of families who use the labor of their children to survive.

According to a report by Mexico's Chamber of Deputies, the majority of these children abandon school or are about to do so, as their families migrate to cities and agricultural export farming regions.

Deputy César Flores Maldonado, coordinator for the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) stated: "The child labor force can be seen in workshops, farm fields, ware-houses, markets, long-haul trucking and in high-risk activities such as sexual exploitation. It is a well-established reality in our nation. Little-or-nothing is done to eradicate it."

Some 15.7% of underage Mexicans engage in some type of work.  An estimated 54.7% of child laborers are domestic workers [many of whom are sexually exploited].

About 5,000 children work as 'carriers' in Mexico City's warehouse industry. The government does nothing to control this exploitation, which causes accidents and deformities in these working children.

Nine in ten indigenous child laborers receive no pay for their work.

The states with the highest rates of child labor are Chiapas, Campeche, Puebla and Veracruz, where 22% of minors work.

In Mexico City, 15,000 minors live and work on the city's streets,

- La Cronica

Mexico

May 2, 2008

LibertadLatina note:

The feudal Spanish system of slave labor that was imposed on indigenous peoples in Mexico and across Latin America during the European colonial period (1400's-1800's) has continued to operate unchanged and with impunity in Mexico and many other Latin American countries . 

For 500 years indigenous women and children have remained the primary target of opportunity for labor slavery, and for sexual predators and sex traffickers, throughout the Americas.

(Yes, our peoples were sex-trafficked by colonists even 500 years ago.)

End impunity now!