Teachers and Students Just Tip of Iceberg of Mexico's Human Rights Crisis Ines M. Pousadela - Inter Press Service
go to original July 15, 2016

Many feel student teachers are persecuted in Mexico and thought of as radicals. (teleSUR)

Mexico is experiencing a monumental human rights crisis. There is abundant evidence of widespread human rights violations in the country, including torture, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and violence against journalists and human rights defenders.

As worrying as the hard data is, what’s even more worrying is the Mexican government’s continued refusal to acknowledge the situation. In the words of Yésica Sánchez Maya of Consorcio Oaxaca, a local civil society organization, the State “is investing more efforts and resources in denying the existence of a problem that is apparent [to the whole world] than in actually solving it.”

Despite constitutional guarantees, the rule of law is incomplete and highly uneven in Mexico. In states such as Oaxaca, where protesting teachers recently met with violent repression, or Guerrero, where 43 students from a teachers’ college were disappeared and are presumed dead since 2014, civil society organisations and activists face powerful restrictions. These include violence linked to drug trafficking, the infiltration of local governments by increasingly diversified organised crime operations, pervasive corruption, police repression, and severe human rights violations by the security forces.

In June, Oaxacan teachers took to the streets to protest what they see as questionable government “education reform”. Over the weekend of 19 to 20 June, security forces killed at least nine and wounded dozens in attacks on the teachers and local residents. A statement cosigned by several Mexican civil society groups highlighted that Oaxacans live in a context of “generalised” violence in which social movements – especially those involving teachers – have been long criminalised by the courts, the security forces and the media.

Contrary to current best practices regarding the management of public assemblies, Mexico’s federal government and the state government of Oaxaca have once again resorted to punitive measures to maintain public order.

Read the rest at Inter Press Service

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