(Cencos) .- As part of the celebration of the 25 years since the founding of the Human Rights Center Fray Francisco de Vitoria, civil society organizations are gathered at the Centro Cultural Universitario (CUC) to reflect on freedom of expression and work of defenders of human rights at the Forum, The Contribution of Civil Society Movement for Human Rights and Democracy in Mexico.
Today, under threat and risk doing our work: the absence of an effective response to solve this problem, be facing a clear contempt of the authorities at all levels of government, the cracking of powers and corruption are serious problems that Mexico is today considered the second country, after Iraq, with a higher risk to perform the work to inform and defend human rights in a situation comparable to South Africa and Sudan, said the director for Mexico and Central America ARTICLE19, Darío Ramírez Salazar.
The agency's director said that although in the past lived "boom years" for dialogue between civil society organizations and government, recently it has reached a time in which to exercise the right to express ideas freely and defend human rights is a complicated and risky, since the work is not recognized by the authorities or by certain sectors of society. "
In this sense, questioned the role of the National Commission Human Rights on this subject, has only issued a recommendation regarding the murder of U.S. journalist Bradley Roland Will, and recommendation number 17 where it is "a general description which can be found elements to build the context and give an explanation, but" said.
Ramírez Salazar also said the paper "useless" the Special Prosecutor for Attention to Crimes against Journalists (FEADP), an attorney general who since February 2006 to November 2008 was declared incompetent to hear the 75 percent of cases of assault reporters, "it shows a lack of political will."
Ramírez Salazar explained that one of the conflicts is that the FEADP not have a definition of journalist, "civil society has struggled to expand the concept to communities that includes bloggers, journalists, filmmakers, and so on. It is important to make clear that the murders and disappearances occur because of their work to inform and not in another context as the PGR argues that contextualizes the problem and says it was for corruption or misconduct. "
said Salazar Ramirez self-censorship which have been bordered the journalists is a symptom not a real output, also becoming a victim of this conflict in society is left without information.
Meanwhile, Brisa Maya Solis, executive director of the Centro Nacional de Comunicación Social (Cencos) indicated that the main attacks on journalists are as disappearances, killings, physical attacks as well as the tools they work with the communicators well as attacks on their transmission facilities. Brisa Maya Solís
mentioned that the government's position in this regard has been to link these attacks to organized crime in the context of violence currently lives by the "drug war" waged since the beginning of this administration by the government federal, but investigations that performed in conjunction with Article19 Cencos shows that these attacks are related to impunity and the links between authorities in pursuit of their own interests.
the past two decades Mexico has positioned itself as one of the countries with greater impunity because the state does not create the right conditions for journalists to exercise their right to free expression of ideas and to collaborate with the right to information society has. Cencos director said that according to research carried out jointly, in early 2009 to date there have been 200 assaults the exercise of freedom of expression and journalists Oaxaca remains the state with the highest number of assaults, as well as the states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Guerrero, Chiapas and Mexico City.
Brisa Maya Solísalso mentioned the censorship that has been the academic sector by university presidents to withhold any guidance in curriculum and express their ideas freely.
Finally, Miguel Concha Malo, director of the Center for Human Rights Fray Francisco de Vitoria said that "it hurts" are journalists who have a clear awareness of the need to censor information, "journalists are punished, but also society has the right be informed in this context is important to use new technologies to keep everyone aware of the situation and have more closeness with the social movements, "he said.
at the forum also included Carlos de la Torre, representative in Mexico for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Agnieszka Raczynska Network of Civil Organizations for Human Rights All Rights for All and Victoria Camacho Beltran, a lawyer from Human Rights Centre Fray Francisco de Vitoria.
Centro Nacional de Comunicación Social
