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The Council on Hemispheric Affairs  

Founded in 1975, COHA is a nonprofit, tax-exempt independent research and information organization. COHA was established to promote the common interests of the Western hemisphere to raise the visibility of regional affairs and increase the importance of inter-American relations. The organization encourages the formulation of rational and constructive US policies towards Latin America.

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Analysis prepared by guest scholar Isida Tushe

January 25, 2012                

                 Human Rights Watch urged world powers to accept Islamist parties as legitimate political powers and to support the rights of Arab Spring protesters after they ousted long-time regimes once backed by the West. In its annual report released on Sunday. Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders also heralded Arab protesters in their annual reviews.
                 "Many democracies have allowed their ties with repressive allies to temper their support for human rights in the Arab Spring protests," Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said in World Report 2012, launched in Cairo on January 22 - three days before the anniversary of the revolt that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.
                 Roth also stressed, "The international community must … come to terms with political Islam when it represents a majority preference," while at the same time "insist  Islamist governments abide by international human rights obligations, particularly with respect to women's rights and religious freedom." In Tunisia and Egypt, Islamist parties won unprecedented majorities in recent elections.
                 Roth said many Western nations in their dealings with the region made what he called an "Arab exception" which included legitimizing fear of political Islam and terrorism, the need to keep oil supplies flowing and a longstanding policy of relying on autocracies to maintain Arab-Israeli peace.

           In recent months, the media has widely reported on the continuous human rights violations committed by members of the Mexican military. While news of these atrocities only recently surfaced on major news stations, Mexican authorities, in fact, have been struggling with human rights abuses since 2007 when these pivotal events first started to come to light.

                 Such atrocities peaked during President Felipe Calderón’s six years in office, as police and armed forces have been found to be involved in at least 170 cases of torture, 24 extrajudicial killings, and 39 forced disappearances since 2006. When President Calderon first came to power, he dispatched military forces throughout Mexico in an attempt to take down the drug cartels and deter the violence generated by rival criminal organizations fighting over territory and clientele.                  Instead of reducing violence, the military forces began perpetuating the very crimes they were charged with stopping. In a country where drug cartels have been co-existing with civil society for years, the police and military forces became embedded in the pockets of the traffickers.

                 In Mexico, the cartels  dominate specific geographical parts of the country, and the fight for influence and expansion of territory is constant. These drug cartels are not managed by corner thugs and criminal lay-abouts, but by sophisticated businessmen who employ a vast network of individuals, which include financial officers, hit men, and lieutenants.

                  Mexico is a poor country containing many immensely wealthy individuals. However, most Mexican citizens struggle daily to bring food to the table to feed their families. In order for the drug cartels to be able to operate in a country like Mexico, it is widely believed the government has to be directly or indirectly involved in supporting these criminal elements.

                 Accusations  the country’s various police forces have been corrupted by the cartels has been mounting for decades and unquestionably has merit. The fact almost no major progress has been made towards dissolving Mexico’s drug cartels shows that the police departments have been deeply compromised by bribery, corruption, and venality. Narcotics dealers also have been exerting a steadily increasing influence over Mexican authorities which could complicate efforts to contain and neutralize the drug cartels.

                 With their operations spreading throughout the country, cartel bribery tactics are having an impact not only on the poor, but also on many high ranking government officials. Recently, US officials found a sophisticated drug-smuggling tunnel under the border of Mexico with the U.S. Considering the fact  such a project would take many weeks to build, some have speculated security force members from both countries may have been persuaded to look the other way as local drug cartels continued to expand their illicit empires.

                 Time and again, contemporary reports about human rights violations have been inevitably backed by a victim’s family member asserting the government statistics on human rights are inaccurate, and many that more civilians have been killed in the drug conflict than officially have been reported. Human Rights Watch reports have detailed the majority of these victims were average citizens who had worked as farmers and mechanics, as well as factory and construction workers.

                 Indeed, no one makes a fuss over these little people when they are reported missing, and in desperation, many of their families have spoken out, contesting that their murdered relatives were innocent and these people had no established ties to illegal activity. However, the police reports routinely implicate them as petty criminals in the drug war, implying their deaths could have been expected and therefore is no reason for the public to be alarmed.

                 Even though in Mexico, “the government is… ethically and legally obliged to use every means at its disposal, under the principle of joint responsibility, to reinforce the presence of authorities in communities with the highest incidence of gang rivalry,” a persistent and critical threat is being posed by the police and military itself. Unfortunately, the security forces are stripping citizens of the power and authority to sustain pressure on the government to stop pretending that it is attempting to protect the rights of ordinary Mexicans when this is clearly not the case.

Sources: http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE7A90RJ20111110,  http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34215.pdf, http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/mexico-security-forces-use-torture-in-drug-war/102517/

Mexican government, army and police, corrupted by drug cartels

U.S. and other Western nations must cease backing Middle East autocracies on behalf of Arab–Israeli peace

                 For example says Human Rights Watch, the United States and the European Union were strongest in standing up to repression in Libya and Syria, whose leaders were considered unfriendly to the West, and were slow to challenge Egypt's Mubarak, a perceived bulwark of regional "stability," until his fate was virtually sealed. "It is time to end the 'Arab exception' and recognize that the people of the region deserve respect for their rights and freedoms as much as anyone else," he added.
                 The report also says  transitional governments in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt "need help revising their repressive laws and building the government institutions that autocrats deliberately left weak and underdeveloped." The 676-page report documents human rights practices worldwide over the past year, with summaries of conditions in more than 90 countries and territories.
                 Meanwhile, Freedom House has called the Arab Spring uprisings "the greatest challenge to authoritarian rule since the collapse of Soviet communism," and said they have brought hope to people around the world who live in countries with oppressive governments.
                 The conclusions come in Freedom House's latest Freedom in the World index, which has been published annually since 1972 and measures the ability of people to exercise their political and civil rights in 195 countries and 14 territories.
For the sixth consecutive year, the number of countries with declining levels of freedom (26) outnumbered those that improved (12). "This continued pattern of global backsliding - especially in such critical areas as press freedom, the rule of law, and the rights of civil society - is a sobering reminder the institutions that anchor democratic governance cannot be achieved by protests alone," says Freedom House.
                 And while the Middle East and North Africa region experienced the most significant gains - especially in Tunisia, which showed one of the largest single-year improvements in the history of the index - it also suffered the most declines. Syria and Saudi Arabia fell from already low positions to the worst possible ratings.
                 "The past year's trends give reason for hope - especially because they arose in a region of the world where many observers dismissed the idea of democratic change as futile," said David J. Kramer, president of Freedom House. "We are at a historic moment, and it is imperative that the United States be fully involved in the difficult process of democracy building that lies ahead."
                 The report emphasizes that 2011 will stand out for being "the first time in some years  governments and rulers who mistreated their people were on the defensive." Reporters Without Borders has weighed in with its 10th annual Press Freedom Index, which also found the Arab world to be "the motor of history in 2011."
                 "Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements. Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes. The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news," said RSF.
                 "The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them," RSF added. Syria, Bahrain and Yemen got the lowest-ever rankings this year.

Information provided by the International Freedom

of Expression Exchange IFEX

The right to freedom of expression, enshrined under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is widely recognized as a vital component of any functioning democracy. When journalists are killed, newspapers banned, radio stations closed and free expression advocates jailed, citizens are denied access to the information they need to participate in decisions affecting their daily lives and communities. Under these conditions, citizens are also denied the security of an environment that allows for the safe exercise of their human rights.

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