THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY RAISES CLAMOR OVER

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 MEXICO 000675

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM MX
SUBJECT: THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY RAISES CLAMOR OVER
CASE OF MURDERED HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS


1. (SBU) Summary. Members of Mexico's indigenous community
continue to find themselves the objects of abuses according
to local and international human rights NGOs. Recently,
these groups have focused on the February 2009 murder of two
indigenous leaders in Ayutla, in the state of Guerrero,
alleging local officials may bear responsibility. The
Secretary of Government's (SEGOB) Director of Human Rights
was familiar with the case but remarked that it was still
premature for his office to engage on it. Meanwhile, CNDH
has opened its own investigation into the case. Given
Mexico's overarching impunity problem when it comes to crime
in general -- not to mention when a member of the security
forces are potentially implicated -- we have little reason to
expect quick movement on this case. End Summary.


2. (U) On March 4 Peace Brigade International
representative Michael Tamblyn met with PolCouns to convey
his concern about the recent murder of two indigenous
leaders, Raul Lucas Lucia and Manuel Ponce Rosas, president
and secretary of the Organization for the Future of the
Mixtec People (OFPM). Tamblyn reported that on February 13
both Lucas and Ponce were abducted from a public school
opening event in Ayutla, Guerrero by three armed men, who
identified themselves as policemen. On February 21, their
bodies were discovered with signs of torture, on the
outskirts of Ayutla by local authorities. While Tamblyn
indicated he was not in a position to identify who was
responsible or offer insight into an immediate motive, he
noted that the local director of public security in Ayutla
had recently made comments to PBI members that human rights
groups were not welcome in the area. The Governor of
Guerrero has announced that he will appoint a special group
to investigate the Ayutla murders. However, the local
community is calling on federal authorities to lead the
investigation. Tamblyn maintained that, in general, as the
military had increased its presence in the state of Guerrero,
it had adopted heavy-handed practices that had served to
intimidate the indigenous population and contributed to an
increase in abuses. He also touched on the unresolved
five-year old case of two indigenous women who were allegedly
raped by soldiers as suggestive of the kinds of abuses
security forces have proven themselves capable of in the
past.


3. (U) According to Tamblyn, the Inter-American Commission
on Human Rights, the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) and the Presidency of the European Union all
published press releases on February 24 and 25 condemning
these murders and urging the Mexican Government to
investigate the case and bring the perpetrators to justice.
Tamblyn insists that PBI and other organizations have drawn
rapid and prominent attention to this case with the hope of
prompting Mexican authorities to open a serious investigation
before it goes cold.


4. (SBU) Poloff met with the Director of the Secretariat of
Governance's (SEGOB) office of Human Rights, Carlos Aguilar
Suarez, to register our interest in this case. Suarez was
familiar with the case but remarked that it was premature for
his office to engage on it. He maintained that as a rule his
office waited for local authorities to conduct their
investigation first. If that investigation were to uncover
evidence of military involvement, his office would look into
the case. Separately, if Mexico's National Commission for
Human Rights (CNDH) undertook its own investigation and
recommended his office look into, he would engage.


5. (SBU) Typically state human rights commissions take the
lead on investigating abuses in their own states. In this
instance, however, Javier Montezuma, a Senior Advisor to the
President of CNDH, told poloff March 6 that CNDH had decided
to assume the lead on an investigation of this case given the
importance it attached to potential abuse of human rights
defenders. He offered no information regarding either where
the investigation stood or when it might be completed.
Meanwhile, Reyna Torres, the Foreign Ministry's Deputy
Director of the Human Rights Policy Office assured poloff
that Mexico was committed to uphold its obligations to the
IACHR and to that end had provided protection as requested to
the wives of the victims.


6. (SBU) Comment. Impunity remains a major problem for
Mexico's criminal justice -- even more so when members of the
security forces are potentially implicated in abuses.
Investigations into such cases are often unprofessional and
influenced by local political considerations. As such, in
the absence of a thorough and credible investigation, it is
difficult to know with any degree of certainly whether, in

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this type of case, a member of the security forces is
implicated or rather the individuals were killed in the
context of dispute within their local communities. SEGOB has
clearly signaled a reluctance of federal law enforcement
authorities to engage on this particular case in the absence
of a recommendation on the part of CNDH to do so. However,
insofar as CNDH is conducting its own investigation into this
matter, it is possible a recommendation could emerge calling
on federal authorities to assume the lead. Of course, by
then, much of the leads for such an investigation could well
have dried up. End Comment.
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