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Discussion Boards => Off-Topic => Debate & Discuss => Topic started by: walksalone11 on March 01, 2011, 11:24:17 am
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In honor of the over 1400 missing/murdered women of Juarez.
From the site of "Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa- May Our Daughters return Home"
"In Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, over 400 women have been murdered in the last ten years. Half of the bodies found had been sexually assaulted, tortured and burned prior to their assassination. More than 350 women are still missing and they will be unless their murderers decide to dispose of their bodies.
Young disadvantaged women are abducted, segregated and sexually assaulted before being murdered and thrown into an abandoned plot.
In some cases their bodies remain hidden for years and some have not yet been found.
It all seem to be part of a plan. Poor young women are chosen by their abductors because they have no power, no voice in society. Most of them work in the maquiladoras, foreign owned duty-free factories, that make up the economy of Juarez.
The assassinations over the years and the fear and insecurity these families fell when their daughters leave home not knowing if they will ever come back are still not enough.
Up to this date all the crimes are unsolved and in August 2006 the Mexican federal government dropped its investigation. Not only nobody has been charged so far but nobody is looking for the missing women.
We invite the Mexican government to take action and stop ignoring that in this border city something extremely serious is happening.
Let’s not be accomplices of this brutality. Let’s do something. Raise your voice and do something.
Let’s do something to stop the violence that has no frontiers in this Mexican border city.
The first murders of young and poor women started in Juarez in 1993 and in 2001 the horror began in the city of Chihuahua too.
“Where and when is it going to stop….”? Marisela Ortiz, Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa.
The families that founded this NGO have transformed their pain into strength after coping with the brutal murder of their daughters, the impunity, the corruption, the indifference of those in power and the insecurity they fell on a daily basis.
“It is hard to express the pain we feel after our young daughters have been brutally killed. It is a constant anguish that never ends and we can’t stop the tears when we think about them or look at their pictures. Our suffering grows as we think about their last moments when they were tortured and we live without living.....”
“We hope that someday justice will be done and then we’ll start living again.”
“We are close to those that like us have been ripped of a piece of their heart, a piece of their life.”
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I've read about this in several different pages online, and it astonishes me. I can't help but feel my heart leap into my throat everytime I think of all the murdered and missing women. I thought I had seen
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This is so sad to hear. If you have any info or a website let me know.
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A great deal of this site is in Spanish, but there is plenty of info in English, too. http://www.libertadlatina.org/Crisis_Lat_Mexico_Juarez_Femicide.htm
Amnesty International: http://www.amnestyusa.org/violence-against-women/justice-for-the-women-of-juarez-and-chihuahua/page.do?id=1108394
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_homicides_in_Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez
And the first place where I read about it, TruTV: http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/index.html
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There is a book called " The Daughters of Juarez" by Teresa Rodriguez that is very informative. A friend ordered her copy from Amazon today and it was like 3 or 4 bucks. I highly reccommend it. There are also some activist groups involved with the issue and I will get some info together on that to post. Other then that, I plan on making a trip to Juarez in the next couple months to meet with some folks close to the situation and will share what ever I can as I can.
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There is a book called " The Daughters of Juarez" by Teresa Rodriguez that is very informative. A friend ordered her copy from Amazon today and it was like 3 or 4 bucks. I highly reccommend it. There are also some activist groups involved with the issue and I will get some info together on that to post. Other then that, I plan on making a trip to Juarez in the next couple months to meet with some folks close to the situation and will share what ever I can as I can.
That would be awesome, Walks. I've been wanting to find out more about it.
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This is devastating. While this is relatively close, women are disappearing all over the globe. Most are sold into slavery or the sex trade.
You are dealing with a country that the Government does little to help the people. Investigations are expensive and their law enforcement personnel are basically corrupt, and not much can be done through them. It's up to activist groups to make their voice heard, to force them into action.
I lived in Mexico (central) for almost 6 months. It was an eye opener just how many law enforcement personnel are on the take. You can buy your way out of a ticket right to the police officer that stopped you. Sometimes you don't even have to do anything wrong to be stopped. Drug cartels/gangs are rampant, and are getting worse.
When you go Walks, take your oldest auto/truck. Insure it to the hilt (you can buy Mexican auto Ins. here in the states before you go). Make sure the sticker provided is easily seen on your vehicle.
If you have a Passport, take it. You don't need it to cross the border, but it's good to have another form of ID besides your drivers license. Keep it on you at all times.
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This is devastating. While this is relatively close, women are disappearing all over the globe. Most are sold into slavery or the sex trade.
You are dealing with a country that the Government does little to help the people. Investigations are expensive and their law enforcement personnel are basically corrupt, and not much can be done through them. It's up to activist groups to make their voice heard, to force them into action.
I lived in Mexico (central) for almost 6 months. It was an eye opener just how many law enforcement personnel are on the take. You can buy your way out of a ticket right to the police officer that stopped you. Sometimes you don't even have to do anything wrong to be stopped. Drug cartels/gangs are rampant, and are getting worse.
When you go Walks, take your oldest auto/truck. Insure it to the hilt (you can buy Mexican auto Ins. here in the states before you go). Make sure the sticker provided is easily seen on your vehicle.
If you have a Passport, take it. You don't need it to cross the border, but it's good to have another form of ID besides your drivers license. Keep it on you at all times.
Thanks Annella, all my vehicles are NDN cars lol. I love my old trucks....I can actually work on them, these newer models all I can do is look under the hood and say "yup...it's broke" ;o)
I go to Mexico often and considering that one can almost throw a rock to the far side of Juarez while standing in El Paso, I wont be driving my vehicle across. That is of course just a slight exaggeration but not much.
The book I mention in my previous post goes a bit into the police corruption and describes some of the heinous methods they use to force false confessions etc. Please consider checking the book out, like I said, it can be had for what amounts to pocket change.
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K
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Its a whole 12 bucks on the kindle, though! If it ain't kindle-ized, it ain't gettin' read!
LOL, just joshin' ya, Walks. ;)
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Its a whole 12 bucks on the kindle, though! If it ain't kindle-ized, it ain't gettin' read!
LOL, just joshin' ya, Walks. ;)
12 bucks is still a bargain. When I got my copy I set and read the 300 some odd pages all at one sitting.
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I checked Amazon, and you can get it for CHEAP, a good used copy is from .62 cents on up. Worth the price. Ordered.
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The Silencing of Women’s Voices
By Frontera Norte-Sur
Photo: Susana Chavez, who was murdered.
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On Tuesday, March 8, International Women’s Day 2011, the voices of many
prominent human rights defenders will be absent from Ciudad Juarez,
Mexico. Within the past 14 months, human rights campaigner Josefina Reyes,
poet Susana Chavez and activist mother Marisela Escobedo all have been
murdered, while Cipriana Jurado of the Worker Solidarity and Research
Center and Paula Flores have been forced to flee the city.
Eva Arce, another well-known women’s activist, has been the target of
previous attacks and threats, and Malu Garcia, a founder of the
anti-femicide organization May Our Daughters Return Home, had her house
set on fire last month.
Paula Flores, whose young daughter Sagrario Gonzalez was abducted and
murdered in 1998, not only was a strong advocate for relatives of femicide
victims, but a community organizer who worked to keep young people out of
the cycle of crime and violence in the low-income Lomas de Poleo section
of the border city.
“The murders of human rights activists show that public space can’t be
used,” asserted Dr. Julia Monarrez Fragoso, researcher and director of El
Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) in Ciudad Juarez. “You can’t raise
your voice and those that do are ‘deserving’ of their deaths.”
Additionally, activists’ relatives have become targets, with vivid
examples being the February killings of Elias and Magdalena Reyes, the
brother and sister of Josefina Reyes, along with Elias’ wife Luisa
Cornelas.
Interviewed on a Mexico City radio station last week, Marisela Reyes said
a new threat received by her slain sister Magdalena’s son was the final
straw, prompting the family to decide political asylum abroad was its only
realistic option.
As a first step in the asylum process, more than 20 surviving members of
the family then flew to Mexico City this past weekend. Prior to the mass
departure, some Ciudad Juarez news sites published photos of the hotel
where the family was staying under police protection.
Other stories later reported on an unusual demonstration of unnamed
persons accusing Reyes family members of besmirching the reputation of
local law enforcement; some anonymous comments published on the Internet
accused the Reyes clan of links with organized crime.
In a press release, the Mexican federal attorney general’s office (PGR)
said national authorities were collaborating with Chihuahua state law
enforcement in investigating last month’s murders of Reyes family members.
The PGR said all motives for the slayings were under consideration.
On Saturday, March 5, the Reyes family and their supporters ended a nearly
month-old protest encampment outside the Chihuahua state prosecutor’s
offices in Ciudad Juarez. Accompanied by Olga Reyes, several dozen
activists then staged a demonstration outside the US Consulate against
violence, militarization and US arms trafficking to Mexico.
Reyes said the protest was necessary because “people in many parts of
Mexico and in other countries don’t know what’s happening in Chihuahua.”
During the demonstration she wore a sash that read: “I am a Reyes Salazar
and don’t want another member of my family murdered.” In total, six
members of the family have been victims of homicide since 2008.
A spreading climate of terror was separately confirmed by Mexico’s
National Human Rights Commission, which requested state protection March 6
for relatives of victims of 2009 Villas de Salvarcar massacre of young
people in Ciudad Juarez. The government human rights agency said
protective measures were necessary to guarantee the safety and physical
integrity of the families.
On a closely related note, the Las Cruces-based solidarity group Amigos de
las Mujeres (Friends of Women) expressed grave concern about the “rash of
assassinations and attacks on activists who are demanding justice” carried
out by “unknown paramilitary organizations, and called attention to a
“disturbing pattern” in which entire families begin to receive threats
that even escalate into more murders.
In a statement, Amigos de las Mujeres also sharply criticized the US
federal government for its treatment of surviving members of Marisela
Escobedo’s family. A Ciudad Juarez mother who tirelessly protested the
murder of her daughter, Escobedo was gunned down in front of state
government offices in Chihuahua City last December. Shortly afterward, her
husband’s business was torched and her brother-in-law murdered.
Family members then sought refuge in the United States, but Marisela’s son
Juan Manuel Frayre Escobedo and brother Hector Escobedo Ortiz remain
locked up in an Otero County, New Mexico, immigration detention center.
The facility, Amigos de las Mujeres noted, was the subject of a recent
report from the American Civil Liberties Union that documented a host of
abuses. The group urged its sympathizers to contact their Congressional
representatives and lobby for the release of Marisela Escobedo’s relatives
from the immigration prison.
For nearly a decade, Amigos de las Mujeres has worked in support of
relatives of femicide victims in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua. And like
many advocates on both sides the border, group members have observed
violence against women and their advocates in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua
spiral upward with no let-up in sight.
According to a new report from COLEF, at least 1,192 women have been
murdered in Ciudad Juarez since 1993, with 442 of the homicides occurring
in the 12-year period from 1993 to 2005 when the city become known
internationally for the crimes committed against women. Of the earlier
victims, 58 remain unidentified, according to Dr. Julia Monarrez.
The lead researcher in the study, Monarrez has identified two main types
of gender violence in the city: domestic and marital violence, and a
second one marked by the serial murders of young, low-income women who are
kidnapped, tortured and mutilated by groups of “powerful men.”
In recent years, a third variant of violence, connected to organized crime
disputes, has added an “extra” deadly element to an already violent scene,
Monarrez told the Mexican press in a recent interview.
In one of the latest instances of criminal violence, an unidentified young
woman was shot to death firing squad-style along with four men in the
Barrio Alto neighborhood of Ciudad Juarez early on the morning of March 6.
Witnesses quoted in the local press described the victim unsuccessfully
begging for her life. On the same day, another woman was found possibly
beaten to death in the city’s conflict-ridden downtown zone.
The violence in Ciudad Juarez will receive heightened international
scrutiny this week, when members of the non-governmental Ciudad Juarez
Women’s Roundtable give talks in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. The
European tour is part of a new campaign to protest the “simulation of the
Mexican state” in addressing gender violence, as well the Calderon
administration’s failure to fully comply with the 2009 Inter-American
Court of Human Rights sentence related to the murders of three young women
in Ciudad Juarez back in 2001.
Andrea Medina Rosas, Women’s Roundtable spokesperson, said hundreds of
national and international recommendations concerning gender violence have
been made to the Mexican government during the last two decades, including
some of which have been attended, but that “effective results” have been
lacking until now.
Additional sources, El Diario de Juarez, March 6 and 7, 2011. Articles by
Daniel Dominguez and editorial staff. Lapolaka.com, March 5, 6 and 7,
2011. Arrobajuarez.com, March 5 and 6, 2011. La Jornada, March 5, 2011.
Articles by Ruben Villalpando and Ariane Diaz. Cimacnoticias.com, March 4,
2011. Articles by Gladis Torres Ruiz. El Paso Times, February 18, 2011.
Article by Diana Washington Valdez.
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My book shipped yesterday, so I should be getting it sometime this week hopefully. I'm too cheap to order the kindle version.
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i will check this book out and get back to you
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› Mexico urged to take action over collusion between criminal gangs and police
Mexico urged to take action over collusion between criminal gangs and police
14 April 2011
Amnesty International has urged the Mexican government to thoroughly investigate links between drug and criminal gangs and public officials, following the arrest this week of 16 police officers accused of working with gang members responsible for mass killings near the US border.
More than 120 bodies have been found in the last 10 days alone in mass graves in Tamaulipas state, on a route used by migrants travelling to the USA.
Amnesty International has repeatedly documented collusion between criminal gangs and public officials in abuses committed against migrants and others, but officials are rarely prosecuted for human rights violations.
"The arrest of 34 suspects is a positive step, but with 16 police amongst those implicated it shows how criminal gangs and their accomplices in the security forces often operate with impunity to commit grave abuses," said Rupert Knox, Researcher on Mexico at Amnesty International.
"In the case of Tamaulipas, the heavy presence of federal police and army in the region did not prevent these killings or the collusion with criminal gangs."
"It is crucial that a full, impartial and prompt investigation, which ensures respect for human rights, continues to identify all those responsible in order that they are brought to justice and the public are provided with reliable information on the actions taken.
"In turn the discovery of mass graves has served to highlight the Mexican government’s wider failure to deal with the country’s public security crisis and to reduce criminal violence which has left many populations vulnerable to attacks, abductions and killings."
“It is vital that there are wider investigations to expose the collusion between security forces and criminal gangs in other areas of the country and prevent such grave abuses occurring again.”
The mass graves were found last week in San Fernando municipality in Tamaulipas state, in the north of the country, where drug trafficking and other criminal gangs operate. The 16 officers arrested are all local municipal police.
Information on the identity of victims remains scarce, but it seems likely that they were not connected with drug gangs. Tamaulipas is also part of the route travelled by Mexican and non-Mexican migrants on their way to the USA. At least some of the victims are believed to have been forced from long-haul buses at gunpoint at the end of March.
Amnesty International has called for the rapid and reliable identification of the victims and the respectful treatment of the hundreds of relatives seeking to verify if their loved ones are amongst the victims.
There have been reports of abductions of migrants travelling through Tamaulipas toward the northern border for many months, but little action was taken to investigate.
In August 2010, the bodies of 72 irregular migrants were found in the same municipality of San Fernando. Several reported gang members have been arrested in connection with this killing but the identity of 16 victims remain unknown.
"Only now on this new discovery of bodies is any action being taken. This is an indication of the limited impact of public security policy to ensure the safety of the population." said Rupert Knox.
The government has acknowledged there were more than 15,000 gang related killings in 2010 and more than 34,000 since President Calderón took office at the end of 2006. The vast majority have never been adequately clarified.
There are also hundreds of cases of abductions that remain unsolved and the whereabouts of the victims unknown.