Five alleged members of a Mexican drug gang were tortured by Mexican police after being detained in the killings of two agents and a car-bomb attack in Ciudad Juarez. The abuse has become typical of the Washington-backed approach Mexico has been taking in its “war on drugs.”
After the tortured men confessed, police have now dropped the accusations. The accused – allegedly members of the La Linea gang – remain in prison on drugs and weapons charges.
The National Human Rights Commission said this week that Mexico must investigate six federal officers and a doctor who didn’t report signs of severe beating.
Mexico’s over-reliance on harsh law enforcement and militaristic approaches to the drug war – actively promoted by the United States – has resulted in a dramatic increase in violence and an unaccountable police and military force that is responsible for widespread human rights violations.
Human Rights Watch recently released a report providing evidence that U.S.-supported Mexico’s security forces participated in “more than 170 cases of torture, 39 ‘disappearances,’ and 24 extrajudicial killings since Calderón took office in December 2006.”
“Instead of reducing violence, Mexico’s ‘war on drugs’ has resulted in a dramatic increase in killings, torture, and other appalling abuses by security forces, which only make the climate of lawlessness and fear worse in many parts of the country,” said José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch. What’s more, claimed the report, is that most of these crimes are committed with impunity.
President Calderon’s policy to deploy 50,000 Mexican troops and thousands more federal police officers – forces that are trained by the United States – appears only to have increased the violence, which has left about 50,000 dead in recent years, including 12,000 dead in 2011.
The "war on drugs" is destroying Mexico. This madness must stop.
The madness is not Mexico's. The maddness is America's.
This "war" could end tonite if all laws prohibiting the production, distribution, and consumption of so-called "illegal" drugs were eliminated.
I didn't SAY the madness was Mexico's. A little projectionism there, huh sir. As long time readers here know, i have opposed the "war on drugs" for many years.
Funny how torture ALWAYS follows US military aid and training programs. Just a few 'bad apples' I'm soon. Undoubtably one of those 'bad apples' will probably some day run the entire Mexican military if the pattern from Central America to Colombia follows on to Mexico.
Check out soaw.org (School of the America's Watch) in case I've got the link wrong from memory. They've exposed a lot of the US training programs over the years that teach torture to places like Mexico. I don't see any new news stories on their site, but they'll likely someday show a connection between these torture victims and military or police officers trained at the SOA. Or whatever its 'new', pentagon-approved Orwellian name is these days. WHISK or something like that, as in WHISK the exposed torture teaching under a rug.
If you are ever in the Southeast the weekend before Thanksgiving, go to Columbus, GA to attend the SOA protests there that weekend. There's usually 20,000 there lately, and you won't regret the experience.