Five years have passed since enactment of the constitutional reform of criminal justice, which includes oral hearings and requires authorities to respect human rights and due process for defendants, victims and those injured by crime. But the new system still does not operate either at the federal level or in the majority of states.
Time is running out, because when it was published in the Official Journal of the Federation, in June 2008, the reform had a period of eight years to be implemented, which means that three years remain for its implementation, and there are still significant delays . Some states have even done nothing to operate the oral trials before judges in their courts.
Faced with this, the non-governmental organizations [NGO] Network for the Rights of Children in Mexico, the Mexican Institute for Democracy and Human Rights, the Office of Advocacy for the Rights of Children, and the Renace [Reborn] organization, in conjunction with the National Network for Oral Trials, announced Tuesday at a press conference the start of the national campaign called Mexico Penal Reform with a Click.
This is fundamentally an informative campaign (by creating a web page) that includes a citizen mailbox the society to use to express its criticism of federal and/or state officials, such as lawmakers who are putting obstacles before implementation of this fundamental reform.
Spokesmen and members of these civil organizations report that to date they have sent more than 30,000 direct requests to the official emails of federal and state officials, as a way of expressing clearly their rejection of the system of opacity, arbitrariness, corruption and impunity that still prevails in the systems of enforcement of justice and of several states.
When reading a joint statement, members of the citizen campaign Mexico Penal Reform with a Click indicated that
"the majority of the participants (in this campaign) are young, because we are a group susceptible to having our rights to justice violated, as was demonstrated by the recent arbitrary arrest of the youth Marduk Chimalli Hernández Castro in Mexico City, one of the entities with no progress made at this moment."
MV Note: The youth was arrested on March 15, 2013, and held in detention for 73 days before a magistrate who ordered his release for "lack of evidence". The Mexico City Human Right Commission (CDHDF) is continuing its investigation of police and enforcement officials for their role in falsifying statements. Source: Excelsior.
"The campaign is accompanied by a detailed monitoring of progress, which is reported on Facebook (tinyurl.com/l6mrx9b) and Twitter @ReformaPenalMX."In the afternoon, in a statement, the Secretariat of Government Affairs [SEGOB] emphasized that the federal government has reiterated its willingness and support in order to meet the deadlines. Additionally, this is about a commitment that has been signed by the political forces in the Pact for Mexico. Finally, the statment mentioned that to date fifteen states
"are already operating, or have begun to operate, the adversarial criminal procedure; in the remainder of the year, the number [of states] is expected to reach nineteen."
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