After a rather intense week of human rights investigation in Oaxaca, Mexico, into alleged human rights abuses by state and federal police, I can share the following brief summary of findings which I will detail in later postings.
1. There have been many serious abuses of human rights in the state of Oaxaca at the hands of both federal and state police, mostly in the second half of 2006.
2. These are not simply allegations: as part of a human rights delegation, I saw several individuals who still bore physical marks of beatings, including three leaders of a popular resistance movement who had been detained briefly and beaten by police and who then, courageously, held an outdoor, late evening press conference which I attended.
3. Further, live testimonies by numerous victims of police repression gave accounts whose details can be deemed credible and who have nothing to gain by exaggerating events.
4. From the view of the federal and state government, mass marches, occupations of public spaces, and violence in the form of molotov cocktails, and physical resistance to arrest, are deemed as requiring a strong response. But much of the abuse by police has occurred not in the moment of apprehension but after individuals were apprehended and unable to offer further resistance.
5. Such abuses, according to victims interviewed, include beatings, pulling people by their hair, throwing people into police vehicles and sitting on them, threatening detainees with death or further abuse, and denial of legal representation or respect for habeus corpus.
6. Impunity. Though our delegation did not have access to full government records on what, if any action the government, either federal or state, has taken to punish police who have violated legal rights of citizens, the delegation did meet with the head of an office under the governor of the state of Oaxaca. To date, that office has opened files on two cases but no conclusions have been reached. A state human rights official would acknowledge only that some abuses of human rights have "probably" taken place in recent months. A national human rights commission has of now made no findings but apparently is making some investigations
7. Political context. The Governor is from the PRI party, as was his predecessor. But in recent elections for the federal Congress, PRI lost all but 2 seats contested.
8. A mass march held Dec. 22 ended peacefully in downtown Oaxaca a few blocks from the main plaza which was still blocked to protestors by steel barriers and ranks of riot police.
More details later.
Photos and links to additional, related information will also be posted.
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