International News

MEXICO CITY, (APP/AFP) – Mexican authorities and a feared gang have committed “crimes against humanity” during the country’s decade-long drug war, a US-based non-governmental organization said Monday.
A report by the Open Society Justice Initiative, which seeks to combat human rights abuses around the world, said more than 150,000 people were “murdered intentionally” and thousands more disappeared between 2006-2015.
The New York-based organization found “reasonable grounds” to conclude that crimes against humanity were committed by “state and non-state actors,” namely the Zetas drug cartel.
“The government must act without delay to recognize the gravity of the situation,” the report said, urging the authorities to invite international help to launch investigations.
The Justice Initiative said the goal of the report is not for the
International Criminal Court to take up the cases.
Rather, the objective “is for the authors of these atrocious crimes to be tried with all the weight of the law, independently of their origin, in their own jurisdiction,” it added.
But the report said the international tribunal should remain an option “if Mexico systematically continues to not investigate and try atrocious crimes.”
President Enrique Pena Nieto’s spokesman, Eduardo Sanchez, did not respond to requests for comment.
Mexican police and soldiers have faced multiple allegations of human rights abuses since then-president Felipe Calderon deployed troops to crack down on drug traffickers in December 2006.
Abuses have continued under Pena Nieto’s administration, which took office in 2012 and has insisted on keeping troops deployed across the country until security is restored.
One of the most high-profile cases is the 2014 disappearance of 43 students in the southern state of Guerrero after their abduction by police in league with a drug cartel.
The military, for its part, came under fire over allegations that soldiers committed extrajudicial killings of at least eight of 22 gang suspects who died after a gunfight. But courts cleared all seven soldiers who were charged in the case.
The report singles out the Zetas, saying the cartel has maintained control of its territories by terrorizing the population with murders, disappearances and torture in “an extremely organized way.”