Mexico Denies Human Rights Crisis Despite Damning OAS Report

A report issued Wednesday by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights urged Mexican authorities to acknowledge how serious the human rights situation in the country is.

But the Mexican federal government immediately responded, claiming the report was “biased” and its conclusions “baseless.”

However, the report cited the official statistics on forced disappearances — 27,000 people are still reported as disappeared, sometimes with the involvement of state officials. It also included the estimate on insecurity: over 10 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants for 10 years.

The report's authors criticized the lack of access to justice and the high level of impunity, referring to the U.N. estimate of 98 percent of crimes that do not lead to a sentence in Mexico.

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The government replied that the IACHR wrongfully inferred from isolated cases a general situation, arguing that the commissioners' five-day visit in Mexico in 2015 “did not reflect the general situation” and was “grounded on erroneous premises” leading to “baseless conclusions.”

Officials also criticized the commissioners for “belittling the structural changes the government had promoted in the past years.”

One day before, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto was urging legislators and governors to move forward on a police and justice reform he had promised almost two years ago.

The disappearances of 43 students in Ayotzinapa back then had put the issue of human rights in Mexico in the international spotlight, pressuring him to make structural changes that would properly address corruption and impunity in the country.

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"Despite the change in administration in December 2012, in practice there have been no substantial changes with regard to security policies and the violence levels," the report said. "Of particular concern are the reports of disappearances, extrajudicial executions and torture."

"Family members' discoveries of mass graves with dozens of bodies underscore that they are the ones who have undertaken the search for their loved ones given the state's ineffectiveness," the report said.

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