Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

MEXICO: Government Does Not Endorse Leaked “Dirty War” Report

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Feb 28 2006 (IPS) - The Mexican government made clear Tuesday that it did not endorse a leaked draft version of an official report that blames the state for human rights crimes against dissidents during the so-called “dirty war” of the 1960s and 1970s.

The report has drawn mixed reactions from activists.

Government efforts to fight political, student and insurgent groups in the past “went outside of the legal framework and included crimes against humanity like massacres, forced disappearances, systematic torture, war crimes and genocide,” states the document, which is titled “Que no vuelva a suceder” (roughly “It Must Not Happen Again”).

“This report, whether or not it is an unedited draft, says what we already knew. But for us it only has relative validity, because it was drafted by the government itself, without any participation by social organisations,” Fabián Sánchez, director of the Mexican Commission for the Defence and Promotion of Human Rights, told IPS.

“Because it was produced by the state, we believe that many arguments and evidence of the dirty war were left out. Nevertheless, I suppose it’s important, as the first of its kind,” the activist added.

The report, drawn up by the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Social and Political Movements of the Past, which answers to the Attorney General’s Office, documents dozens of cases of torture, murder and forced disappearance committed by soldiers and other government agents during the administrations of presidents Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970), Luis Echeverría (1970-1976) and José López Portillo (1976-1982).

According to earlier reports, the crackdown on government opponents carried out by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) during its 71 years in power (1929-2000) affected thousands of anti-government activists and others, including 532 victims of forced disappearance.

Massacres were also committed. In 1968, hundreds of students were killed when the police and army opened fire on demonstrators in Tlatelolco square in Mexico City, and in June 1971 a group of paramilitaries killed dozens of student protesters, also in the capital.

Rubén Aguilar, spokesman for the government of Vicente Fox, said the draft document “is not official and has not undergone a final edit, which is why the president has not endorsed it.” He added, however, that the final version would be released in the next few weeks.

Unconfirmed press reports stated that the government launched a probe into who leaked the report, in order to punish whoever was responsible.

In the view of José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, the draft report is a step forward.

He said that while the report itself recognises that it does not present a complete summary of the events of the “dirty war”, it shows that there is compelling evidence for moving ahead in prosecuting these “appalling cases.”

Sánchez, whose Commission for the Defence and Promotion of Human Rights is involved in legal processes aimed at clarifying 40 cases of forced disappearance and torture, said that for now he would not give his backing to the report, because activists were not consulted while it was being drawn up.

“The Fox administration promised that we would participate, but failed to live up to its promise,” he added.

The report posted Monday on the web site of the Washington-based National Security Archive (NSA) states that ”The authoritarian attitude with which the Mexican state wished to control social dissent created a spiral of violence which . . . led it to commit crimes against humanity, including genocide.”

It concludes that rapes, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial executions formed part of a “state policy” that came from the country’s highest-level political officials and military brass.

According to Kate Doyle, director of the NSA’s Mexico Documentation Project, Ignacio Carrillo, the head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Social and Political Movements of the Past, wants to “clean up the report” before it is released.

The special prosecutor’s office was created five years ago to investigate and take legal action against those involved in the “dirty war”. But so far, it has only had arrest warrants issued for three people, including a former police chief.

Attempts to prosecute officials, including former president Echeverría, have been blocked by shortcomings of the legal system and by legal maneuvers by defence lawyers.

Instead of setting up a truth commission to clarify human rights crimes of the past, as other countries have done, Mexico opted for a special prosecutor’s office empowered to bring legal action against those suspected of involvement.

The report’s authors state that it was aimed at “interpreting” what happened and reporting on painful events, and that it would not impede further legal action to prosecute those responsible for the repression.