ISHR published on 21 January 2019 this profile of Romel Rubén Gonzalez Diaz from the Indigenous and Popular Regional Council of Xpujil. This organisation works in partnership with the Cooperativa Chac Lol, in the defense of the territory, training in municipal and human collective rights, generating sustainable development alternatives (agriculture, biocultural tourism, sustainable management of natural resources). The main problem in Muna, Yucatan is the proposal to establish a solar park megaproject with 1227,000 solar panels, destroying 700 hectares of tropical forest, by the company Sunpower of the USA.
Jesus Eugenio Ramos Rodriguez was at breakfast Saturday morning 9 February 2019 when he became the second journalist murdered in Mexico this year. Rafael Murua, a community radio station director in the northern state of Baja California Sur who had received death threats for his work, was found dead in a ditch Sunday, 21 January 2019, after being reported missing. [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/01/22/first-mexican-journalist-killed-in-2019-protection-mechanism-failing/]
On 11 February 2019 Front Line Defenders and the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (OMCT/FIDH) – together with 2 other NGOs – brought out a joint statement in which they celebrate the release of human rights defenders Damián Gallardo and Enrique Guerrero, but urge Mexican authorities to include the end of criminalisation against human rights defenders as a central theme in the human rights agenda of this Presidential term.
[On 28 December 2018, Messrs. Damián Gallardo Martínez and Enrique Guerrero Aviña were released after a resolution in this regard by the Eighth District Court of Federal Criminal Proceedings in the State of Jalisco. Both human rights defenders had been arbitrarily imprisoned since May 2013 and had been victims of repeated violations of their human rights since their arrest, including acts of torture and ill-treatment and numerous violations of their due process rights.]
….In this regard, we once again urge [See Joint Open Letter to the President Elect of the United Mexican States, Mr. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, dated 27 August 2018, “To put an end on the criminalisation of human rights defenders must be a priority for the new Mexican] the Mexican Administration to include as a central theme in the human rights agenda the development, with the participation of civil society, of a State policy that puts an end to the criminalisation of human rights defenders in Mexico. Download the full Statement
The body of 34-year-old Rafael Murua Manriquez was found by the side of a road in Northern Mexico Sunday 20 January 2019, the same day he had been reported missing by his family. The former director of the community radio station, Radiokashana in Santa Rosalia, has become the first Mexican journalist to be killed in 2019.
Within his news reporting, Rafael Murúa Manríquez, is believed to have denounced the aggressions of the municipal president of Mulegé Felipe Prado, according to El Comercio. Following a statement from the Mexican representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Jan-Albert Hootsen, it has also been confirmed that the young journalist had already received threats since last year and had been placed under the country’s journalist protection programme since 2016.
It is the second journalist to have been reported as murdered within the presidency of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the first of which was killed just one day after his inauguration. The country’s leading NGOs and media protection agencies have since called upon a thorough investigation into the murder, in hopes of finding the people responsible.
At least ten journalists were killed last year alone, and in 2018 Mexico recorded the highest rate of press disappearances around the globe. The attacks continue on a long line of violence against the press throughout the past decade in Mexico as cartels brush shoulders with politicians creating a violent treat towards the investigation of ‘narcopolitics’. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2018/03/24/new-national-award-to-honor-slain-mexican-journalists/
The Federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which is used by Mexicans who have had their lives threatened, came into play in 2012. However, the initiative is believed to already be overwhelmed with recent enrollment. …With both federal and state protection mechanisms, there are also concerns that journalists with state-level support are often seeking protection from the very authorities trusted with guarding them. Last year, Mario Gómez Sanchez was gunned down by armed motorbikers, however, human rights groups could not explain why his protection mechanism was removed before his killing. The State Attorney General’s office declined to comment when contacted by Aztec Reports.
On 13 December 2018 ISHRGlobal published this interview with Mariana Zaragoza. “Our countries are restricting migrants’ rights, and there is always something we can do to demand full protection of people“, says Mariana Zaragoza in her interview. Mariana works in the immigration programme at the Ibero-American University of Mexico and she advocates for migrants and refugees’ rights.
On 6 November 2018, four UN Special Rapporteurs have strongly condemned the killing of Julián Carrillo, an indigenous rights defender from the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, who had worked tirelessly for over two decades to defend his community against the exploitation of Rarámuri ancestral lands.
On 23 October 23 2018, Julián Carrillo told a friend by phone that he believed he was being watched and said he would go into the forest in an attempt to hide. On the evening of 25 October, his body was found. He had multiple bullet wounds. “We urge the Mexican authorities to identify the perpetrators of this reprehensible crime and to bring them to justice in accordance with the law,” the experts said.
The experts also urged the Government to address the underlying causes of such violence. “The killing of Julián Carrillo highlights the serious situation in the Sierra Tarahumara where the lack of recognition of indigenous land rights is a root cause of the recurring violence against and displacements of indigenous communities.”… [The UN experts are: Mr. Michel Forst, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; Ms. Victoria Tauli Corpuz, Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples; Ms. Agnès Callamard, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; and Ms. Cecilia Jimenez-Damary, Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons.]
Julián Carrillo’s murder is one of a spate of killings of human rights defenders in the country. According to official OHCHR figures, 21 human rights defenders have been killed so far this year, nine of them from indigenous communities. Four members of Julián Carrillo’s family – his son, son-in-law and two nephews – have been killed since February 2016.
This follows soon after the assassination on Wednesday 23 October of journalist Gabriel Soriano Kuri. Soriano had been covering Governor Héctor Astudillo Flores’ third annual report for the Radio y Televisión de Guerrero (RTG) broadcaster that evening. After the event, held in Acapulco, he was driving a company vehicle when he was attacked and killed by armed civilians. Following the murder, Astudillo offered his condolences to Soriano’s family via Twitter. But it didn’t go down very well. Soriano’s daughter replied with a blunt message: “My dad was assassinated doing his job. Covering your report to the state! Do your job and fix the situation the state is in. It’s not right,” she wrote. Her discontent was echoed in at least three demonstrations where journalists demanded that authorities solve the assassination of their colleague. A state journalists’ association reported that three members of the profession have been slain during Astudillo’s three years in office.
This is Human Rights Defender Yésica Sánchez from Mexico who has been involved in the broad struggle for human rights including torture, disappearances and detention with emphasis on indigenous women. This is another of the profiles recently published by European External Action Service (EEAS) in the context of the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2018/10/04/chia-wei-chi-first-in-series-of-videos-by-european-external-action-service/].
I reported already on the creation of a new award in Mexico [https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2018/03/24/new-national-award-to-honor-slain-mexican-journalists/]. On 3 May 2018, the Mexican journalist Daniela Rea, known for her chronicles of the violence gripping her native country, was awarded the first edition of the Breach-Valdez Prize in Journalism and Human Rights. “We are gathered here today for them, for a prize born out of pain,” Rea said on accepting the award from Valdez’s widow. “But we are also here for all those other colleagues, many of them anonymous, who continue going out into the street, notebooks in hand, to ask questions, to write, to try to understand the workings of this machinery of death… despite our narco-government.”
(Rea, 35, was born in Guanajuato, in central Mexico, but launched her journalism career in the eastern state of Veracruz, one of the most violent in the country because of turf wars between rival drug cartels. From 2005 to 2012 she worked in Mexico City for respected newspaper Reforma, focusing on the consequences of the Mexican government’s decision in 2006 to deploy the military to fight drug trafficking. “I didn’t make a conscious choice and say ‘I’m going to write about human rights.’ It was the natural result of writing about Mexican life,” Rea told AFP.)
Journalists take part in a protest outside the State Government building in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico to mark one year since the murder of journalist Miroslava Breach (AFP Photo/HERIKA MARTINEZ)
The UN and AFP launched an award Thursday 22 March 2018 to honor journalists who risk their lives to cover human rights abuses in Mexico, in tribute to two celebrated reporters murdered last year. The Breach-Valdez Prizewill honor journalists who follow in the footsteps of their slain colleagues Miroslava Breach and Javier Valdez, two of the more than 100 reporters murdered since 2000 in one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the press. (see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2018/01/05/front-lines-2017-report-confirms-worst-expectation-over-300-hrds-killed/)
Its aim is “to recognize the careers of Mexican journalists who have distinguished themselves in defending human rights,” said Giancarlo Summa, director of the United Nations Information Center in Mexico.
Valdez, an award-winning journalist who covered Mexico’s powerful drug cartels, was gunned down last May in broad daylight outside the offices of Riodoce, the newspaper he co-founded in Culiacan, the capital of his native Sinaloa state. He was also a long-time AFP collaborator.
Miroslava Breach, a correspondent for Mexican daily La Jornada in the state of Chihuahua, on the US border, was a celebrated investigative journalist known for hard-hitting reports on links between politicians and organized crime. She was shot dead in broad daylight last March as she drove her son to school.
The annual prize is also co-sponsored by UNESCO, the Ibero-American University and the French embassy in Mexico. The first edition will be awarded on May 3 in Mexico City. The winner will receive a grant and a trip to France to take part in a series of events on free speech.
(Breach and Valdez were among at least 11 journalists murdered in Mexico last year, making it the deadliest country in the world for the press after Syria, according to watchdog group Reporters Without Borders. The latest murder came just Wednesday, when journalist Leobardo Vazquez was gunned down outside his house in Veracruz state — the second killed in 2018.)
“There is no indication these crimes are going to stop. Let’s hope this prize will help all the country’s brave journalists keep up the fight,” Valdez’s widow, Griselda Triana, said at the launch of the award.
This is a national award. There are many awards for journalists and for freedom of expression at the international level, see: http://trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/
On 14 February 2018 a group of four UN human rights experts urged the United States Government to respect the rights of human rights defenders, amid concern over action being taken against a Mexican woman who campaigns to protect migrants’ rights. Maru Mora Villalpando, who has been in the US since 1996, is facing deportation proceedings after fronting a high-profile campaign against alleged human rights violations at a US immigrants’ detention centre, operated by a private company on behalf of the US government. [Ms. Villalpando, whose 20-year-old daughter is a US citizen, is co-founder of a group which highlights human rights concerns about the Northwest Detention Centre in Tacoma, Washington. She has raised the issue with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and with the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, alleging corporate involvement in human rights violations as well as expressing concern over hunger strikes and the deportation of migrants. The UN experts have been in contact with the Government regarding their concerns.]
“Ms. Villalpando’s notice to appear at deportation proceedings, received without warning, seems to be related to her advocacy work on behalf of migrant detainees”, the experts said. “We urge the US Government to protect and ensure Ms. Villalpando’s rights as a defender and her right to family life”.
“The authorities should take all necessary measures to guarantee that no action, including detention and deportation, as means of retaliation, is taken against Ms. Villalpando for reporting cases of the detention of immigrants and alleged violations of their human rights, especially in view of the reported conditions in these centres of detention”. The experts said they were concerned that Ms. Villalpando’s case appeared to be part of a pattern. “Giving people notice of deportation proceedings appears to be a part of an increasing pattern of intimidation and retaliation against people defending migrants’ rights in the US”, the experts said.
Front Line Defenders said female human rights defenders in particular are increasingly reporting “hyper-sexualised smear campaigns and defamation” which aim to limit their activism by eroding local support networks. File photograph: Getty Images
There were 312 human rights defenders killed in 27 countries last year, according to the new report. Two-thirds of those killed were activists working on issues of land, environmental and indigenous peoples’ rights, while 80 per cent of killings took place in just four countries – Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and the Philippines. Front Line Defenders said the number of killings remained “truly shocking”, while the “weak response of both national governments and the international community gives little hope that this will change in the short term”. The report outlined that in 84 per cent of killings the defender had previously received a threat.
Andrew Anderson, executive director of Front Line Defenders, said “we know that those killings, in many cases were preventable”. “When we analyse those killings, in 84 per cent, the defendant had previously received a threat, and that highlights if there had been effective action taken by the police or other authorities, there could have been something done to prevent that killing happening.” Mr Anderson added: “These are not random killings of people in crossfire – This is the targeted elimination of people who are working to defend the rights of the most vulnerable.
Front Line Defenders said female human rights defenders in particular are increasingly reporting “hyper-sexualised smear campaigns and defamation” which aim to limit their activism by eroding local support networks.
