A leading international human rights watchdog group Tuesday issued a scathing report on Mexico, grouping it with the Western Hemisphere’s worst human rights offenders.
Torture, arbitrary detentions and “disappearances” are widespread, and the government appears interested only in taking action in cases where members of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party are the victims, the report said.
Human Rights Watch, through its Human Rights Watch/Americas arm, singled out President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon for a lack of progress on human rights during his term. Taking office in 1994, Zedillo pledged respect for the rule of law.
“Under the government of President Zedillo, there has not been progress,” Human Rights Watch investigator Jose Miguel Vivanco told a news conference. “The levels of impunity are exactly the same as they were five or seven years ago.”
Although refusing to rank Latin American countries, Human Rights Watch/Americas grouped Mexico with Cuba, Haiti, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Guatemala as the worst offenders in the hemisphere, Vivanco said.
