For Mexico, a blueprint on rights

MEXICO CITY -- The United Nations yesterday released an unprecedented study of Mexico's human rights woes -- from the serial murders of women along the US border to the continued use of torture by police -- that it hopes will serve as a road map for government policy on matters including the criminal justice system and indigenous rights.

Anders Kompass, representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico, presented the 190-page report to President Vicente Fox, who has pledged to use the recommendations to develop the country's first national human rights policy.

"Like never before in history, respect for people's rights has been converted into state policy," said Fox, whose July 2000 election victory ended 71 years of autocratic one-party rule. "My government agreed to invite both international scrutiny and cooperation in its actions. We did it because we know human rights is not just a passion fashion. We did it because we have nothing to hide."

The 8-month study was the product of an unprecedented request, Kompass said. It was the first time a government had invited the United Nations to peruse its human rights record and propose solutions.

"Mexico represents a new experience, working with a government that is going through a democratizing experience and that sees collaborating with the UN as an interesting partnership," Kompass said in an interview yesterday. "People should realize that human rights is not just the agenda of one political party, but part of the human agenda of the country. Many of the recommendations are absolutely necessary if Mexico is going to go forward."

The report contains more than 400 recommendations, most of which have been proposed before by Mexican and international human rights groups. But it is the first time the country's top human rights activists and academics have been brought together to study the problems and propose solutions -- and that the government has committed itself to listen.

Human rights activists said the analysis was an important first step.

"It's really an incredible opportunity for Fox to really make a difference and leave his mark on a Mexico that is more respectful of human rights and is more democratic," said Laurie Freeman, a Mexico specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America, which advises the US Congress on regional human rights issues.

She said the most important recommendations were those related to the criminal justice system, particularly strategies for eradicating torture and ensuring the rights of the accused.

"The Mexican system is inquisitorial, and the assumption is that you are guilty," Freeman said.

The report recommends that the Mexican constitution be amended to include a provision of presumed innocence and establish that only judges can hear confessions. Human rights groups have long decried police torture of suspects to extract confessions, which are then used in court even when evidence of mistreatment exists.

Freeman and other human rights defenders questioned whether Fox would take the recommendations seriously, citing recent signs that human rights had fallen on his agenda. In August, Fox closed the country's first government human rights office and fired its director, respected activist Mariclaire Acosta, citing a shortage of funding.

Fox has also been criticized for failing to follow through with previous agreements with the Zapatista army of Mayan rebels, who are still awaiting enactment of a 1996 peace accord with the government. A watered-down Indian rights bill passed by Congress in 2001 but rejected by representatives of the country's 12 million Indians.

The UN report recommends reopening the debate on indigenous rights, arguing that the recent reforms do not go far enough to ensure communities control over their land and natural resources.

It also emphasizes the need for a more transparent investigation into the serial killing and mutilation of more than 90 young women in Ciudad Juarez, on the US border, over the past decade.

Other recommendations include full ratification of global conventions on torture and forced disappearance. The Mexican Senate ratified both treaties with the caveats that military officers cannot be tried in civil courts and that only crimes committed since 2001 can be prosecuted. The issue is crucial to efforts to prosecute those responsible for Mexico's so-called dirty war of the 1960s and 1970s, when hundreds of leftist activists were killed by the government or "disappeared."

The study recommends amending the constitution so that human rights accords take precedence over federal and state laws. Although Mexico has ratified nearly every international treaty related to human rights, most have yet to be incorporated into the penal codes, meaning they have little practical effect.