The State Department’s annual report on human rights in the world hurt President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. It could not be any other way: he tells him that what he presumes about freedoms in Mexico is a lie, he paints him as an authoritarian ruler, he leaves him as incompetent in the administration of justice and as an aggressor of the fundamental values of democracy, attacking to counterweights like the Supreme Court, and to the media, uncomfortable guardians with whom the powerful have to deal.
The document has been published every year since 1977 by mandate of Congress, to which a report is delivered on the state of human rights in 200 countries and territories in the world. Mexico is in both categories and since the report was made public, the government has expressed its disagreement with the diagnosis. The list of human rights violations increased significantly since the government of Enrique Peña Nieto, but the observations rose even more in that of López Obrador.
The Mexican section, which was prepared in the Office on Mexico that depends on the Undersecretariat for Western Hemisphere Affairs (as they call Latin America and the Caribbean) with the information sent by the embassy in this country, contains seven sections where only one, related to workers’ rights, has a positive note when mentioning the increase in salaries as a result of pressure from the Joe Biden government. The other six sections are devastating.
It includes reports of illegal or arbitrary murders, extrajudicial executions by federal security forces, which have also engaged in cruel, inhuman punishment or mistreatment or torture, forced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, interference in the independence of the Judiciary, restrictions on freedom of expression that include threats against journalists and legal threats to limit press freedom, as well as gender violence. It’s not the only thing. It records “the high levels of violence” of criminal organizations, where the majority of these crimes are neither investigated nor prosecuted.
López Obrador’s response yesterday was full of sophistry, but he did not deny anything stated. The errors of ignorance in his response were also notable. He called the report a “resolution,” which it is not, and said that since he is respectful of the United States, that is how they should be, that “they were left with the mania of 200 years ago, since the Monroe Doctrine,” referring to Manifest Destiny. which was created two centuries ago and which under the axiom of “America for Americans” closed the interference of Europeans in continental affairs.
However, he blurted out:
*”We don’t tell them, and why do you have a candidate harassing you in court?”
*And why don’t you release Assange, who has been unjustly imprisoned?”
*And why don’t you take care of the young people in the United States who die from drug addiction, from fentanyl?
*And why do you repress and mistreat migrants?”
What he pointed out is a direct interference in the internal affairs of the United States, in the same way that since 1977, by making public the human rights report, the United States has interfered in the internal affairs of other countries. But in the response-attack he makes fundamental mistakes:
*The harassed candidate is Donald Trump, who is on trial after being accused of 34 crimes for having falsified documents from his companies to pay a porn star, via the former owner of the scandalous tabloid The National Enquirerso that he would not reveal that he had had sexual relations with the former president while his wife Melanie was pregnant, because it could have affected his presidential campaign in 2016. Unlike what the Mexican government has done, the American did not fabricate evidence against Trump.
*Julian Assange was detained in the United Kingdom at the request of the Swedish government for two crimes of sexual abuse, pending his extradition, which never arrived. Although Sweden canceled his request due to the difficulties in processing him in that country, Assange requested asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy, where he lived until 2019, when his political asylum and Ecuadorian nationality were withdrawn. He is in a London prison fighting extradition to the United States, which accuses him of having committed alleged war crimes by spreading state secrets on WikiLeaks, the portal he created. His case is paradigmatic and touches on freedom of expression. A few days ago it was revealed that Biden is considering canceling the accusations.
*The United States government declared the fentanyl crisis an emergency and has requested $1.55 billion to address it from a health perspective, as well as requested $1.2 billion to combat trafficking of the substance, mainly along the border with Mexico. . López Obrador incorrectly touched on the health part, but omitted that he already accepted that Mexico is part of the solution to the problem and committed to combating its trafficking.
*On the issue of migration, it was López Obrador who agreed, first with Trump and then with Biden, to do the dirty work on migration, modifying the asylum policy and repressing migrants on the border with Guatemala, without preventing the extortion of organizations criminals who operate in Mexico, nor take care of their safety, as in the immigration center of Ciudad Juárez, where a fire caused the death of 40 people a little over a year ago. There were no people responsible for the tragedy within the government. The Immigration Commissioner, a friend of the President, remains protected and in charge of him.
López Obrador’s non-responses will not change at all the photograph he took in the State Department report about what they see in Mexico, nor will they pay any attention to it. His word has no weight. The threats to allow the free passage of migrants without containment is what has allowed him room for maneuver, but not impunity to obscure the photograph of what he has done here with freedoms and human rights.
