Report: Leahy blocks report on Mexico human rights

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Aug 5, 7:44 AM EDT
Report: Leahy blocks report on Mexico human rights

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., blocked the release of a favorable State Department report on Mexico's human rights record, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Leahy's action delays the release of $100 million in U.S. aid meant to help Mexico combat drug traffickers. The Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion, three-year package, requires Congress to withhold some of the funding unless the State Department reports that Mexico is not violating human rights while prosecuting the drug war, the Post reported.

"Those requirements have not been met, so it is premature to send the report to Congress," Leahy said in a statement released to the newspaper. "We had good faith discussions with Mexican and U.S. officials in reaching these requirements in the law, and I hope we can continue in that spirit."

The Post reported that the State Department had intended to send its report praising Mexico's progress on human rights to Congress this week. But aides to Leahy, chairman of the Senate Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, cited reports of torture and forced disappearances in rejecting the report.



Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_MEXICO?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-08-05-07-44-01

[tularetom]

1. I'm glad he is concerned about Mexico's record on torture

I wish he was as concerned with our record on torture.

[Chef Eric]

2. Why do you think Leahy is not concerned with our record on torture?

Hasn't Leahy been one of the most vocal senators concerning torture?

<http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/04/leahy-will-defy.html>

<http://leahy.senate.gov/issues/foreign%20policy/torture032103.html>

[Jim Sagle]

3. Itsy bitsy baby steps...regrowing a spine after Bushco tried to kill him is proving to be a

slow process.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Thanks for mentioning it. They really hate him. Even after the assassination attempt,

Cheney still had so much hatred to discharge he couldn't control himself and told Leahy to Cheney himself on the floor of the Senate.

They meant to send a message. No doubt he got it.

[Peace Patriot]

5. This Associated Pukes article goes on to say...

"President Barack Obama is traveling to Guadalajara, Mexico, this weekend for a summit with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper."

Now think about this for a moment. President Obama is meeting with the rightwing president of Mexico--widely believed to have stolen the 2005 presidential election, and who got the billions from the Bushwhacks to nazify the "war on drugs" in Mexico, and whose other major initiative is to try to privatize Mexico's oil--and the rightwing Canadian PM, who achieved power I'm not sure how--he is such a lover of fascism--and who never saw a death squad in Latin America that he didn't like.

And President Obama is NOT meeting with the leaders of the overwhelmingly popular, leftist democracy movement in Latin America, say, to study how transparent elections are conducted, or how to achieve universal medical care, or how you produce five straight years of nearly 10% economic growth, most of it in the private sector, while providing universal medical care, supporting equal access to education through college and other bootstrapping programs and accumulating over $140 billion dollars in international cash reserves for a "rainy day"--the Venezuelan model of a mixed socialist/capitalist economy--and how y,ou don't do it with "free trade" neoliberalism and further militarizing the failed "war on drugs" with billions and billions of the peoples' dollars needed for other things.

Obama, of course, has to meet with a lot of different people. I'm not criticizing him for that. And he did attend a conference in Latin America and met with other leaders including a brief nod to Chavez--a man repeatedly chosen by big majorities of Venezuelan voters in an election system that is far, far more honest and transparent than our own. I am talking about serious consultation--of the kind Obama is no doubt currently engaged in with two of the most rightwing, corpo/fascist leaders in the hemisphere, to study, talk about and consider proposals for, oh, say, social justice, or participatory democracy, or supporting labor rights (including not pitting one labor force against another in a race to the bottom, and how to stop the murders of labor leaders in Colombia), and other topics of vital concern to most people, as opposed to corporate agendas (who wants which piece of Mexico's or Venezuela's oil and how to get it), how to privatize everything (oil, water, seed DNA, the public airwaves, telecommunications, vote counting, et al). I don't think that social justice is on Calderon's or Harper's agendas. It may be on Obama's, and, if it is, why isn't he meeting intensively with the Latin American leaders who are doing something about it, instead of those who are actively obstructing social justice reform? In fact, why doesn't Obama call Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and their major allies, Lula da Silva, Cristina Fernandez and others to the White House "for a beer"? Or, rather, for more than a beer--for serious consultation on peace and justice in this hemisphere?

Just wishing and dreaming and hoping.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Mexico's war on civil rights

Mexico's war on civil rights
Obama must demand an end to abuses linked to President Felipe Calderon's drug crackdown.
By Denise Dresser
August 7, 2009

When President Obama goes to Guadalajara, Mexico, this weekend for the North American Leaders Summit, he will surely praise Mexican President Felipe Calderon for the courage he has displayed fighting the war on drugs. The applause is well deserved. Calderon has turned the crackdown on drug traffickers into the centerpiece of his administration and has pursued organized crime with undeniable zeal. But before Obama becomes too effusive and pats Calderon on the back for a job well done, it's important that the U.S. president remember the cost and the consequences of his counterpart's crusade.

In Mexico today, human rights violations committed by the military and the police in this effort are on the rise, yet punishment for the perpetrators remains elusive. So although Obama should recognize Calderon's efforts, he should also insist that drug lawlessness cannot be combated by breaking the law and that the army must be subjected to the kind of scrutiny it has shunned so far.


Today, more than 45,000 soldiers police the roads of Mexico's main cities and drug-producing areas as part of a strategy designed to confront drug traffickers and contain the violence they wreak. Many ring leaders have been captured, many drug shipments have been confiscated and many smugglers have been imprisoned.

But violence remains unabated, and the unintended consequences of Calderon's efforts have become distressingly clear: The number of cases of human rights violations brought before the Mexican Human Rights Commission has risen by 600% over the last two years.

The war on drugs is turning into a war on the civilian population that can't simply be dismissed as collateral damage. Mexico's military is capturing "capos," but it's also raping, extracting confessions through torture and detaining people arbitrarily. Crime is begetting more crime.

In light of this, U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) was right this week to call "premature" the U.S. State Department's draft report claiming that Mexico has fulfilled its human rights obligations under the so-called Merida Initiative. He is right to remind officials on both sides of the border that in return for Merida's $1.4 billion in counter-narcotics aid from the United States, the Calderon government made promises it has not kept. Key among these are greater transparency and accountability, and the imperative that military officers be tried by civilian courts.

More:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-dresser7-2009aug07,0,6996483.story