Armed assailants have killed Mexican lawyer and Indigenous rights activist Patricia Rivera Reyes
Armed assailants killed Mexican lawyer and Indigenous rights activist Patricia Rivera Reyes, authorities announced Monday.
The prosecutors’ office in the northern border state of Baja California said three masked intruders burst into a home in the border city of Tijuana where a festivity was being held Saturday night.
The intruders robbed party-goers of their personal possessions. Rivera Reyes reportedly demanded her cell phone back, when one of the assailants shot her in the head.
Another man at the house was also shot in the head and taken to a local hospital.
Early this year, the government acknowledged that 97 community and rights activists have been killed during the current administration, which took office Dec. 1, 2018. Officials said 90 percent of those crimes have yet to result in convictions.
So far this year, eight journalists have been murdered in Mexico.
La abogada asesinada ayer en el centro de Tonalá, Verónica Guerrero, agredida cuando abordaba su vehículo, era también la representante de la lucha legal de los vecinos de Urbi Quinta contra la empresa Caabsa y la operación del basurero de Matatlán. Advierten que la abogada había sido amenazada en las últimas semanas, algunas de ellas directas, por parte de pepenadores que se oponen al cierre de este vertedero. Incluso señalan a un familiar de la lideresa Araceli Batres como responsable de dichos hostigamientos en contra de la litigante. Los vecinos señalan que las amenazas escalaron en las última dos semanas y la pasada incluso recomendó la abogada tomar precauciones ante el incremento de hostilidades.
Condenamos el asesinato de la abogada y activista Verónica Guerrero
Hacemos un llamado a que el caso sea investigado de manera diligente, efectiva y bajo la perspectiva de género y a que se garantice la integridad de las personas defensoras de derechos humanos en Jalisco https://t.co/h3ZyWuHGMz
Vía @muralcom La abogada Verónica Patricia Guerrero, asesinada ayer en Tonalá, participó en movilizaciones para señalar una operación irregular en Matatlán. https://t.co/V4xOqAkuk8
En un video difundido en sus redes sociales, el abogado Juan de Dios Hernández Monge, conocido por su defensa de los derechos humanos y laborales, ha denunciado que la SEP trata de criminalizar su comportamiento como abogado y defensor de derechos humanos.
En el video, que abajo se inserta, el abogado relata que desde el año 2013, un grupo de 21 maestros y maestras, todos adultos mayores, solicitaron su asesoría legal para defender sus legítimos derechos laborales, dado que fueron despedido con motivo de la reforma educativa realizada por el entonces presidente Enrique Peña Nieto. Incluso el abogado relata que las renuncias de maestros y maestras fueron obtenidas (en 2013), bajo presiones y en medio de “armas largas”. Una vez que se desarrolló el juicio, en 2019 lograron que un tribunal ordenara el pago de los salarios caídos e indemnizaciones. Empero, con diferentes artimañas la SEP intentó evadir su responsabilidad, por lo que los demandantes interpusieron denuncias penales; según precisa el abogado, entre los denunciados ante el Ministerio Público se encuentra el actual embajador en Estados Unidos, Esteban Moctezuma Barragán y quien fuera secretario de la SEP.
Según explicó de Dios Hernández en el video, la razón por la que lo pretenden criminalizar es porque tardaron un tiempo en notificar a los tribunales el fallecimiento de dos de las profesoras demandantes y ello fue así porque, como se recordara, el 30 de marzo del 2020 se declaró la emergencia sanitaria y obligó a la suspensión de las actividades en las diferentes instancias de gobierno; por ello, sigue relatando el abogado, en cuanto las condiciones de la emergencia sanitarias lo permitieron, hicieron la notificación respecto de los fallecimientos; no obstante, la SEP pretende “intimidarlo” mediante su criminalización por una causa que “no procede”; según el abogado, se trata de una argucia legal de la SEP para no cumplir con su obligación de pagar los salarios caídos e indemnizaciones.
Ante la sucia campaña y criminalización al abogado Juan de Dios Hernández Monge, defensor de derechos humanos, abogado del CGH en 2000, abogado de la @liga_abogados y compañero solidario. No está solo, cerramos filas ante el ataque a nuestro compañero https://t.co/PpmfeBcB6k
Delfina Gómez : Evitemos la criminalización de Juan de Dios, reconocido abogado de causas justas – ¡Firma la petición! https://t.co/bIzw9en2cY vía @Change_Mex
En @brigadaelisa exigimos se deje de Criminalizar a nuestro compañero y hermano de lucha de más de 30 años. Basta de hostigamiento @SEP_mx El Reconocido abogado Juan de Dios Hernández Monge. pic.twitter.com/KEmWI85UdL
In its 2001 annual review, Peace Brigades International noted: “The situation of human rights defenders [in Mexico] worsened significantly after the 19 October assassination of internationally known human rights defender Digna Ochoa and death threats against other human rights defenders.”
That PBI report further noted: “One of the cases that Digna Ochoa had been working on implicated the army in human rights abuses against environmental activists campaigning against logging in Guerrero.”
In it, Emiliana Cerezo Contreras says: “In 2001 my brothers were accused of putting bombs in several offices of the National Bank of Mexico, Banamex. Through some friends, my brother Alejandro got in contact with Pilar Noriega and Digna Ochoa, two lawyers who took on their cases. That is how the Cerezo Committee was created.”
Democracy Now! has also reported: “Ochoa worked on behalf of peasant ecologists in the state of Guerrero, Zapatista guerrillas in Chiapas and indigenous peoples in her home state of Veracruz. At the time of her death, she was defending three men charged with bombing banks in Mexico City to protest against globalization.”
Lawyer’s Rights Watch Canada adds: “She represented many cases involving allegations of torture or murder by Mexico’s military and security forces, including the widows of the Aguas Blancas massacre and the campesino ecologists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera. Montiel and Cabrera, who received the Goldman award for their work in forcing Boise Cascade to stop clear-cutting in the southern state of Guerrero, were sentenced to imprisonment on drug and weapons charges that Ochoa claimed were fabricated. Digna exposed the use of torture by the army to extract confessions from the environmentalists.”
IACHR ruling
Now, La Jornada reports: “The Inter-American Court of Human Rights [IACHR] found Mexico responsible for serious failures in the investigation into the death of human rights defender Digna Ochoa on 19 October 2001.”
That article adds: “Therefore, it ordered the Mexican state to reopen the investigations of the case in pertinent terms; investigate and eventually prosecute those possibly responsible for his death; carry out a public act of international responsibility and create a recognition in the defense of human rights that will bear the name ‘Digna Ochoa y Plácido’.”
Reuters also reports: “The Mexican government committed serious errors in the investigation of the death of the activist Digna Ochoa two decades ago and must continue with the probe, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) said on Wednesday [January 19].”
“Ochoa, who received death threats before her body was found with gunshot wounds in October 2001, was a lawyer who defended cases of human rights violations allegedly committed by civilian and military security forces.”
La Corte IDH emitió la sentencia en la que señala al Estado mexicano como responsable de las falencias en la investigación del asesinato de #DignaOchoa.
Esta resolución sienta un precedente para investigación de violaciones a derechos humanos de personas defensoras. pic.twitter.com/OZNlDuUHY8
A young lawyer is dead in Mexicali, the latest victim in a disturbing trend across Baja California.
37-year-old Pamela Pizarro Herrera was found dead in her office. Someone shot her in the head.
Witnesses report seeing two men in the area before the shooting. At this point it’s unclear if Herrera was the intended victim.
“We know that she was not threatened or had problems with other people, she was simply there when the attack happened. It is outrageous because she is a woman, she is a mother of 3 kids. It’s not worth that we’ve already reach this level of insecurity. We demand results from the government, but we also need true crime prevention programs from our authorities. We are close to taking justice into our own hands, because the violence is getting worse,” said Elias Flores Gallegos, the president of Mexicali’s Bar Association.
In the last two years, 28 Baja California attorneys have been attacked. This is the second incident in Mexicali this year.
For a decade, Ana Lorena Delgadillo pursued justice in one of Mexico’s most notorious atrocities. The San Fernando massacre stunned the nation with its barbarity: Gunmen yanked at least 193 people — some of them Central American migrants — off buses, bludgeoned them to death and dumped their bodies in clandestine graves. No one has ever been convicted.
Delgadillo fought all the way to the Supreme Court to force the government to divulge details on the 2011 massacre, widely blamed on the Zetas cartel. Finally, she won. This year, authorities turned over the 271 volumes of their investigation to her human rights group. And there, in Volume 221, the 48-year-old lawyer found something startling.
The Zetas, it turned out, weren’t the only suspects in the case.
She was one, too.
Mexican authorities secretly opened an organized-crime investigation into Delgadillo and two other women trying to unravel what happened in San Fernando, according to more than 200 pages of court documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
Opening the investigation gave prosecutors special powers to surveil the women. Theyobtained records of their phone calls and texts. Federal police then mapped their communications.
The three women are among the leading figures documenting Mexico’s crisis of the disappeared, in which more than 94,000 people have vanished. One is an award-winning journalist, Marcela Turati. Another is an acclaimed anthropologist, Mercedes “Mimi” Doretti.
De Semanario Proceso- ONU-DH condena persecución de Estado contra Marcela Turati, Ana Lorena Delgadillo y Mercedes Doretti – #NoEstanSolashttps://t.co/VrYrUy7qOK
.@ONUDHmexico expresó su preocupación y pleno respaldo por las acciones contra periodista y defensoras de derechos humanos en México. Esto por la investigación en contra de Ana Lorena Delgadillo, Mercedes Doretti y Marcela Turati. https://t.co/IoCi1SHZbUpic.twitter.com/IU83A4nw5h
#Noticias 📰 “Esto no se va resolver con que se quite a unos cuantos (funcionarios de la @FGRMexico), porque es la estructura lo que está mal“, advirtió en ese sentido Ana Lorena Delgadillo, directora de la Fundación para la Justicia @FJEDD@CentroProdhhttps://t.co/J7HeYzioeR
The entire action was filmed by witnesses who thought it was a family dispute
On November 3 at 12 noon, two armed men in a SUV with California plates broke into Tijuana’s Civil Courts and kidnapped a lawyer in front of the building. The courts are guarded by armed security men from a private company. The two men easily reached the building’s entrance, grabbed the woman by the arm, and pushed her out towards their car.
The entire action was filmed by witnesses who thought it was a family dispute, but after watching the violence against the female lawyer they tried to intervene. Then the suspects showed their guns to threaten witnesses and lawyers there.
The city courts are located in 20 de Noviembre neighborhood right next to La Via Rapida, the main highway in the city. The scene is two miles from the financial zone, considered Tijuana’s golden area of security. No public authority showed up in front of the courts, but the police department began a search of the area to find her.
Two hours after the abduction, the lawyer – identified as Monserrat Alvarez – was found by state security agents and escorted to the Prosecutors Office, which took control of the case.
The next day, the president of the Tijuana Bar Association, Catalina Salas Bravo, pointed out during a press conference the seriousness this event represents. It took place in the Civil Courts, where citizens should be getting justice.
“We got information that confirms the existence of metal detectors in the court that don’t work. There’s disarmed security guards… where is our safety there?”
Today marks 200 days since the disappearance of lawyer and woman human rights defender Grisell Pérez in Tlalmanalco, 🇲🇽 #Mexico. The State has a duty to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation and take necessary measures to ensure the protection of her relatives. pic.twitter.com/OId3SCvlBk
— Mary Lawlor UN Special Rapporteur HRDs (@MaryLawlorhrds) October 12, 2021
Hoy se cumplen 200 días de la desaparición de la abogada y #defensoradederechoshumanos Grisell Pérez en Tlalmanalco, 🇲🇽 México. El Estado tiene el deber de realizar una investigación exhaustiva e imparcial y tomar medidas para asegurar la protección de sus familiares. pic.twitter.com/vu4F15MREw
— Mary Lawlor UN Special Rapporteur HRDs (@MaryLawlorhrds) October 12, 2021
(1/2) A 200 días de la desaparición de la defensora de #DDHH Grisell Pérez Rivera, en el Estado de México, la ONU-DH reitera el llamado a las autoridades para garantizar su búsqueda y la investigación efectiva del caso (https://t.co/DznmaSfomV). pic.twitter.com/gdpUy5usI4
✊🏾Mensaje de nuestra codirectora regional, @LydiaAlpizar, exigiendo justicia y la presentación con vida de la defensora mexicana Grisell Pérez, quien lleva 146 días desaparecida.#TeBuscamosGrisellhttps://t.co/4ayKUA7AgB
— Conocerles es reconocerles (@ConocerlesEsRec) August 14, 2021
Grisell Perez Rivera, abogada defensora de derechos humanos, desapareció el 13 de marzo de este año en Tlamanalco, Estado de México. #NiUnaMenos#HastaEncontrarles
— Violeta Radio 106.1 FM (@VioletaRadio_FM) August 2, 2021
#CDMX 🔴 | Familiares de Grisell Pérez Rivera, de 38 años de edad, quien desapareció el 26 de marzo, realizan volanteo en calles de la Colonia Penitenciaria de #VenustianoCarranza (@A_VCarranza). 🚨
The murder of Abel Murrieta should get Americans’ attention.
On Thursday, an assassin or assassins riddled the 58-year-old Murrieta with bullets while campaigning for mayor of Cajeme, a town in the border state of Sonora, Mexico.
Mexican authorities didn’t say how he died nor have offered any possible motives, but surely this wasn’t an ordinary murder. Graphic images of his body lying on the street quickly made the rounds on social media, sparking outrage and accusations.
Murrieta, the former attorney general of Sonora, which shares a 372-mile-long border with Arizona, was also the lawyer of the LeBarón family that lost nine members in a brutal 2019 ambush.
That 2019 massacre of three mothers and six children – members of a fundamentalist Mormon community that has historic ties to Mesa – shook the world for the brutality of the attack while they were driving through the neighboring state of Chihuahua.
In its usual morning conference from the National Palace, Lopez Obrador stated that the natural gas crisis in Texas, United States, only reaffirms his work plan that the Mexican State should be the one to guarantee the energy supply.
“It is a shame that Mexican lawyers are employed by foreign companies that want to continue plundering Mexico; of course, they are free, but hopefully they will internalize that this is treason,” (SIC) criticized AMLO.
He remarked that the population’s welfare could not be left in private companies’ hands because it is a fallacy that the free market will solve all problems. He also made it clear that the State cannot fail to fulfill its social responsibility or suffocate private initiative. For this reason, he celebrated the fact that Mexico was able to solve the electric energy crisis in five days because the plants of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) that work with coal, fuel oil, and the hydroelectric plants of the Grijalva River were at the disposal of the State. T
According to the President, previous governments wanted to turn the CFE facilities into scrap to keep the electricity market. However, thanks to the fact that his government rescued them, it was possible to face the crisis caused by natural gas.
Since the beginning of AMLO’s Fourth-Transformation or “4T”, the legal profession has not been spared from the attacks and accusations of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Yesterday we saw it again.
For the President of the Republic, the legal profession’s free exercise ends when his “interests are violated.” In his eyes, the litigants turn against the country and “its people.”
Since the beginning of the government, many litigators have been threatened, harassed, and persecuted by AMLO’s government —most of them in the fiscal and criminal areas.
Multiple firms such as Javier Coello Trejo’s, José Luis Nassar Daw, Diego Ruiz, Ángel Junquera, and Fernando Ruiz were harassed and pressured to drop high-impact cases and defenses.
The hostilities have already been the object of denunciations abroad before instances such as the International Bar Association and the U.S. Department of Justice itself.
The issue will continue to grow because as long as López Obrador radicalizes his absolutist positions, such as the preferential initiative being voted today for the Electricity Industry Law, resistance will increase.
The chambers and business associations are entrenching themselves in the National Council of Strategic Litigation, a body of lawyers who work pro bono and seek to curtail the authoritarianism and unreasonableness of the 4T.
Pronunciamiento del Consejo General de la Abogacía Mexicana, sobre el libre ejercicio de la defensa jurídica. pic.twitter.com/g1q5doHfsf
— Consejo General de la Abogacía Mexicana (@ConsAbogaciaMEX) February 23, 2021
La práctica libre e independiente de la abogacía es reconocida en todo el mundo, es incluso obligación internacional del Estado Mexicano, pareciera que a algunos se les olvida. https://t.co/spzAUq5Ww0
IAPL Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers 