Noting it as a government with “autocratic leanings,” the international organization Human Rights Watch warned that the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador maintains the tendency of his predecessors to record serious human rights violations, acts that usually go unpunished.
Through its 2022 world report, the organization maintained that acts such as human rights violations —including torture, forced disappearances, abuses against migrants, extrajudicial executions, gender violence and attacks against independent journalists and human rights defenders— have continued during the current government, while the implementation of the legal reforms approved in 2017 and 2018 have been slow and have so far been ineffective in combating torture and impunity.
Likewise, it was warned that President López Obrador has considerably expanded the scope in which the Armed Forces operate, and has depended to a great extent on them to control drug trafficking and organized crime, promoting widespread human rights violations. Between 2013 and 2020, the CNDH received 3,799 complaints related to military abuses.
Attention to pandemic
Likewise, HRW pointed out that in the case of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, the government of President López Obrador has not adopted many of the basic measures recommended by global health authorities to limit the spread of Covid-19.
While the official in charge of coordinating Mexico’s response, Hugo Lopez Gatell, has referred to large-scale testing as “useless[es]” and “a waste of time”, despite the insistence of the World Health Organization on the importance of carrying them out, and “as a result, Mexico has one of the lowest rates of tests—and one of the highest rates highest number of positive results—in the world. Officials and experts agree that the actual statistics of infections and deaths from Covid-19 are probably several times higher than the official figure.
disappearances
The report also touched on issues such as the disappearance of thousands of people, warning that the police, military forces and criminal organizations are responsible for many cases.
In addition to the conditions in which journalists and human rights defenders —especially those who criticize public officials or expose the work of criminal cartels— have been victims of attacks, persecution and surveillance by government authorities and criminal organizations.
In the case of migrants and asylum seekers, HRW recalled that it is common for cartels, common criminals and, on occasion, police and migration officials to rob, kidnap, extort, rape or murder migrants transiting through Mexico and that these crimes they are rarely reported, investigated or penalized.
Added, he said, to the fact that “the López Obrador government has actively participated in abusive migration policies of the United States.”
maritza.perez@eleconomista.mx
