Torture Persists in Mexico, Says Rights Group

A Mexican human rights group has catalogued 50 different types of torture used by police and says that abuses continue despite government pledges and efforts to curb them.

The list of torture methods compiled by the Tijuana-based Binational Human Rights Center includes electric shocks to the genitals, burning through a person’s fingernails with red-hot metal clips and forcing carbonated water laced with hot pepper up a suspect’s nose.

“Torture has become more sophisticated, more refined, more modern,” said Victor Clark Alfaro, director of the independent center. “They (police) have found more efficient torture methods which don’t leave traces. But the practice has not diminished.”

According to a five-year study of 158 cases handled by the Human Rights Center, Mexico’s Federal Judicial Police are particularly active in torturing suspects to extract confessions or money.

A year ago, a report by the U.S. human rights organization Americas Watch, which cooperates with Alfaro’s organization and gives it high marks for impartiality, reached similar conclusions and described torture in Mexico as “endemic.”

“Torture and extra-judicial killings by federal and state police and the country’s security forces are disturbingly frequent in Mexico,” Americas Watch said. “Torture . . . is practiced by most if not all branches of the federal and state police.”

Last month, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari declared that the government “will not permit the abuse of authority . . . . We will fight impunity and incompetence all the way to assure respect for human rights.”

The president’s promise followed a number of steps that were meant to curb human rights abuses: the establishment in 1990 of an official National Human Rights Commission, changes to the penal code and a shake-up in the office of the attorney general.

“Unfortunately, there is a deep chasm between rhetoric and reality,” said Clark. “The government pronounces good will but abuses continue. So far this year, we have received 200 complaints, roughly the same as in 1990.”