Mexico to be Judged by Rights Commission Over Rape of Women in Atenco teleSUR | |
go to original October 6, 2016 |
The Women of Atenco (Kerri MacDonald)
As the Mexican state failed to follow the recommendations of the Inter-American Commission, the bloc's court has confirmed it will now examine the sexual assault of 11 women by police officers which occurred in the State of Mexico a decade ago, the association of victims confirmed in a communique Wednesday.
In December 2015, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ruled in favor of the victims, a group of residents from a small community called San Salvador Atenco, who blocked a highway in March 2006 to protest the violent eviction of a group of flower sellers from a local market by police forces.
Although the state partially admitted its responsibility in 2013, the victims said it failed to deliver justice, including the sanctions against the federal forces involved in the abuses.
“There has not been one single firm sentence and the ongoing judicial procedures are limited to the state (not federal) level … which demonstrated to the Commission the state's lack of commitment to punish all the people responsible.”
The Court ruling, unlike the commission recommendation, is binding and could create a juridical precedent avoiding further sexual abuses by federal security forces.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who served as governor of the state at the time, then ordered hundreds of state police to remove the blockade, leading to violent confrontations, causing the deaths of two protesters, the arbitrary arrest of over 217 people, most of them women, who were packed onto buses and sent to distant prisons.
Read the rest at teleSUR
Related: President Peña Nieto Can't Shake Police Rape Scandal (teleSUR)
Related: Mexico Remembers 2006 Atenco Tragedy When Police Raped, Killed (teleSUR)
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