Mexico’s President Sets Up Panel to Probe Human Rights Abuses

Under attack for his government’s deteriorating human rights record, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari on Wednesday announced the creation of a national human rights commission to investigate abuses.

The announcement follows the assassination of a prominent human rights activist in Culiacan in Sinaloa state last month and comes as the Organization of American States is scheduled to discuss Mexican electoral fraud at its full session in Paraguay today.

“The government of the republic will not tolerate abuses, stupidities or excesses committed by those who forget their responsibility as public servants,” Salinas said. “We will not defend political bosses or particular interests who try to put themselves above the law.”

Human rights activists and opposition political parties, however, accuse the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party of fraud in local, state and national elections. And more than two dozen people have been killed in violence following recent elections in Michoacan and Guerrero states, most of them members of the Revolutionary Democratic Party.

The rightist National Action Party complained to the OAS about what members called fraudulent elections in Chihuahua and Durango states during 1985 and 1986.

Human rights groups also accuse the Mexican Federal Judicial Police of committing widespread abuses in efforts to combat narcotics trafficking.

The most serious case for the government is the murder of Norma Corona Sapienz, a lawyer and president of the independent Human Rights Commission of Sinaloa, who was gunned down May 22.

Corona had publicly denounced the abduction and murder of three Venezuelan students and a Mexican lawyer in Culiacan last April. She blamed their deaths on the federal police.

Salinas announced the 12-member Human Rights Commission at a ceremony in the National Palace. It is to be headed by Supreme Court Justice Jorge Carpizo.

Ellen Lutz, California director of Human Rights Watch, urged Salinas “to give full power to the commission to conduct investigations and do something about them.”