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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | January 2007 
Army Alone Won't Stop Mexico Drug Violence - UN
 Catherine Bremer - Reuters
| | A German police with a dog stops protesters with banners after they entered the compound of Bellevue castle, the official residence of German President Horst Koehler, before the arrival Mexican President Felipe Calderon in Berlin January 25, 2007. Several protesters, holding banners against the visit of Mexico's President Felipe Calderon enter the presidential compound and where removed by police. The banner reads, 'No homicides any more in Mexico. Police and Army get out of Oaxaca region'. (Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch) |
Mexico's use of the army to round up suspected drug cartel members will not eradicate drug violence unless more effort is put into intelligence work, a United Nations official said.
Amerigo Incalcaterra, a Mexico-based representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, also said care was needed, in using soldiers as policemen, to avoid adding to human rights abuses in Mexico's shaky criminal justice system.
Presenting a study of human rights breaches within the justice systems of five Mexican states, Incalcaterra said it was vital that President Felipe Calderon look at broader ways to combat crime and impunity in Mexico.
"It's not through military action alone that you can really succeed in controlling organized crime," Incalcaterra told a news conference, calling for more funds to be invested in the police and intelligence services.
"Organized crime is fought with intelligence work. The thing is to be much more skillful in this sense," he said.
The U.N. study found widespread breaches of human rights in Mexico's justice system, which is notorious for reports of police thugs torturing suspects into confessions and jailing them for long periods ahead of a trial.
Faced with an alarming rise in drug cartel violence, with 2,000 brutal killings recorded last year, Calderon has used his first few weeks in office to send thousands of troops to hunt for gang members in northern and western Mexico.
The soldiers have set up military checkpoints and made scores of arrests, even seizing guns from municipal police in the northern border city of Tijuana to look for signs of cops being involved with drug killings.
INVITATION TO CORRUPTION
Mexican crime experts say the army operation should be backed by a crackdown on graft and inefficiency in the justice system.
Miguel Sarre, coordinator of the U.N. study, on Thursday described the murky rules and infrastructure of Mexico's criminal justice system as "an invitation to corruption."
His report criticized the way police carried out arrests and the fact that too many convictions were based on confessions alone. Sarre said planned justice reforms in Mexico, such as introducing oral trials, did not go far enough.
Taking a step toward addressing such concerns, Calderon this week announced a plan to retrain federal, state and local police, hike their funding and set up a national crime database.
"The important thing is to fight organized crime within the framework of respecting human rights," Incalcaterra said of the sweep on drug gangs. "We hope the authorities carry out this fight with full respect to all the people involved."
Mexico has handed over four major traffickers to the United States this month, a move that will stop them running smuggling operations out of their Mexican prison cells. |
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