WUNRN
MEXICO - SECRETARY OF STATE TO
UNVEIL MEMORIAL TO WOMEN SLAIN IN JUAREZ
August
29, 2012 - Marisela Ortega Lozano
Mexico's
Interior Ministry secretary, Alejandro Poire, on Thursday will to unveil a
memorial in Juarez dedicated to women slain in Juarez, state officials said.
The Interior Ministry is similar to the State Department in the United States.
The dedication will be at a cotton field in Juarez where eight girls and young
women were found slain on November 2001. The memorial complies with a December
2010 sentence issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, part of the
Organization of American States. According to the court's ruling, the Mexican
government did not thoroughly investigate the 2001 cotton field murders, and
instructed the officials to investigate and follow other directives.
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MEXICO - VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN WORSE THAN EVER IN JUAREZ -
EXPERTS
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Ciudad Juárez,
Mexico – The body of the 16-year old girl was found last month lying face
down in a park near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Perla Cristal Garcia
Ponte was released to her mother after being arrested the day before for public
intoxication. Shortly after being returned to her family at 3:30 p.m., June 17,
the teen ran away.
Next morning, her body
was found in Chamizal Park, a well-traveled oasis in this city of brown and
gray shades. Officials said she was strangled to death and found beneath a sign
that said access to the area was for municipal use only.
The case of Garcia Ponte
highlights a problem in Mexico that has been quietly pushed out of the public
eye thanks in large part to the country’s ongoing drug war – that women are
being murdered in the city at alarming high rate.
"Murders are rarely
investigated and only 1 percent are even decided upon," said Irma Casas,
director, Casa Amiga Esther Chavez Cano, a woman's rights advocacy and
counseling center. And the situation seems to be getting worse, Casas said.
Juárez received worldwide
attention in the early 1990s not only for an inordinate number of women
missing, but the sadistic manner in which they were murdered.
And while the headlines
have disappeared, the problem has not.
Cecilia Espinosa of Red
Mesa de Mujeres said officials have used the war on drugs to deflect attention
from a problem that has actually worsened after the insertion of the military
and federal police into Juárez.
Human rights
organizations have been tracking the murder and disappearance of women in
Juárez for nearly 20 years and the numbers are staggering, despite officials
boasting the lowest murder rate in three years.
According to statistics
provided by Casa Amiga, between 1993 and 2007 - before Mexican President Felipe
Calderón escalated the war against the cartels in Juarez - there were a total
of 385 women reported murdered. From 2008 through 2011, there were 789 women
officially reported murdered, a more than 100 percent increase despite a
saturation of military and federal police in the city. Through June of this
year, 60 women have been killed, reports show.
Silvia, Najera,
spokeswoman, for the Chihuahua State Prosecutor for Attention to Women Victims
of Crime by Reason of Gender, said her office recognizes there is a problem and
steps are being taken to address it. She said the higher numbers is not
because more women are being kidnapped or killed, but because more people
are reporting it.
“I’m sad and hurt as a
woman,” said Najera. “But fortunately, there is an increase of women who are
complaining and denouncing to the authorities all the abuses such as rape,
abuse, and murder.”
She said there NGOs were
created to address the problem. And there is a higher level of trust among
women for the government’s efforts, so they are reporting it more.
“From the past 10 years
to the last three, you can see an increase of complaints not because more women
are being abused, but because more women are making complaints to the proper
authorities,” Najera said.
Among these efforts was
the establishment of the Chihuahua state office of Prosecution for attention to
women, a governmental office that is responsible for receiving all complaints
of crimes against women.
“We are responsible to
demand that the woman’s human rights are being respected,and their guarantees
be invoked,” Najera said.
But critics say the
increase on violence against women is because of a long-running culture of
impunity and corruption in Juárez.
Casas believes there is a
concerted effort by the government to avoid the topic of violence against women
in the media. She claims there is an agreement that keeping accurate statistics
is daunting because of poor record keeping, institutional interests, public
relations, and silence of the victims.
Casas said there has been
a culture created in the police department by Chief Julian Leyzaola, a
hard-charging military man credited with a significant drop in crime in what
was until recently known as "The Murder Capital of the World." She
claims police are over abusing their powers by storming into homes and sexually
attacking women.
The chief's office did
not return phone calls seeking comment.
"Leyzaola has given
the police powers they don't have," Espinosa said.
Espinosa knows first-hand
about the abuse of power she accuses law enforcement of. One night after work
she got into her car when it was surrounded by four police pointing guns at
her.
"Their commander got
into my car and made sexual advances at me," she claims.
She said she still has
emotional issues over what happened to her.
"I see I don't have
the right to be safe," she said. "We need to have unity among women
here to make our right to be free of violence."