Mexico Government Using Smear Campaign to Discredit Ayotzinapa Investigation — In the final weeks of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts' (IGIE) second term of investigation into the Ayotzinapa case, a smear campaign is intensifying against several of its members, including officials of the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), as well as renowned national activists who have denounced the country’s severe and widespread human rights crisis.
Mexico Congress Consideration of Law on State of Exception Puts Rights At Risk — The Chamber of Deputies' Committee on Government yesterday approved a draft of the law regulating implementation of Article 29 of the Constitution, referring to the president's power to restrict or suspend, with legislative approval, rights and guarantees in cases of invasion, serious breaches of public safety or any other situation that puts society in grave danger.
Government Attacks Inter-American Human Rights Commission — The Attorney General's Office (PGR) has decided to pursue Emilio Álvarez Icaza, Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH), based on a complaint for the alleged crime of fraud against the Mexican state in relation to the work of the IGIE [Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts, investigating the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa normal school students], filed by a sinister character named José Antonio Ortega. Ortega's texts reflect his ignorance of international human rights law and intergovernmental mechanisms in the field. What is surprising is that the PGR would agree to be the executing arm of Ortega's nonsense.
Mexico Needs Drug War to End — The “War on Drugs” initiated during the presidency of Richard Nixon has been lost. In Mexico, one of the most important battle fronts, the failure has been obvious for some time. At an international level there is still an ongoing debate. If the U.S., the country that issued the guidelines on prohibitionist policy worldwide, is already beginning to legalize the consumption of marijuana, all the more reason for the Mexican government to rethink, and quickly, the very nature of its drug policy.
Mexico Drug War-Tlatlaya Case: "Taking Down Criminals" — This Wednesday it became known that a military judge had acquitted six of the seven soldiers implicated in the massacre that took place on the June 30, 2014 in Tlatlaya that cost the lives of 22 civilians. By his decision, the military judge implicitly freed the soldiers of the allegation that they had participated in the execution of civilians who had already surrendered after shots were fired from both sides. At issue is whether the soldiers received an order, or so interpreted one, or acted on their own initiative to eliminate civilians who were already under their control.