IACHR hears case on violence against migrants traveling through Mexico

[Derechos]

Drug Wars, Foreigners and Violence in Mexico

Yesterday, a hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington focused on horrendous rights abuses facing thousands of foreign nationals in Mexico. No, it was not the plight of Americans or Europeans caught in ruthless battles over control of the drug trade. (I’ll address that later). Instead, this horror involves systematic kidnapping of migrants, mostly from Central America, making their way through Mexico.

According to a dozen human rights centers in Mexico, organized criminal organizations, with the complicity and sometimes participation of state agents, have been seizing, torturing, extorting and sometimes tens of thousands of migrants. Over a period of six months, nearly 10,000 migrants (9,758 to be exact) were kidnapped in Mexico. Here’s a link to a video of the hearing in Spanish. To give you a sense of the scale, that rate of kidnapping eclipses the rate of forced disappearance in Argentina during the Dirty War (1976-1983). And almost no one has been paying attention.

http://humanrights.change.org/blog/view/drug_wars_foreigners_and_violence_in_mexico

[Name removed]

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[Judi Lynn]

2. Since Cubans started going to Mexico and coming across at the border,

thereby avoiding the enormous cost the Cuban-American smugglers charge for bringing them to Florida in their fast boats, the Cuban "exile" mafia started waylaying them in Mexico, and holding them for ransom there.

Figures, doesn't it?