Article by PBI-Canada

The image reads: Defend human rights in Mexico: Impunity does not end. June 2019 to May 2020 Report. Free political prisoners.

On August 24, Urgent Action for Human Rights Defenders AC (ACCUDEDH), the Cerezo Mexico Committee and the National Campaign against Forced Disappearance released this report on human rights violations against human rights defenders in Mexico.

The introduction to that report notes: “This report reflects, by figures, the human rights violations that were committed by the Mexican State against human rights defenders during the period from June 1, 2019 to May 31, 2020.”

“This means that it accounts for the numbers of people, organizations and communities that, for exercising or defending one or more human rights, were attacked, arbitrarily detained, imprisoned, extrajudicially executed or forcibly disappeared.”

The report documents:

– 1,659 violations through 107 events

– 25 communities, 17 organizations, 47 people, 34 family members and 502 people belonging to communities or organizations were impacted

– 249 acts of arbitrary detention

– 9 extrajudicial murders

– 4 forced disappearances

– 1,477 of these acts of violence were committed by state police, while 136 cases were attributed to municipal police and 46 to federal authorities.

The Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project has posted on Facebook the article from the Mexican news magazine Proceso titled In one year, 1,659 attacks against human rights defenders: Cerezo Committee.

PBI-Mexico has previously noted: “The Cerezo Committee was established after the arrests, torture and detentions of the brothers Alejandro, Héctor and Antonio Cerezo Contreras in maximum-security penitentiaries in Mexico.”

PBI started accompanying the Committee in 2002.

To read the full 124-page report in Spanish, please click on Defend human rights in Mexico: Impunity does not end.