The executions in Nuevo Laredo must be a watershed moment for ending human rights violations in Mexico
Arturo Garza, a 19-year-old engineering student and baseball aficionado, left home to visit his girlfriend on the night of Saturday 27 June. It was the last time his family would see him alive.
The next day they looked for him all over Nuevo Laredo, a border town in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. They reported his disappearance to the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Missing or Abducted Persons, but it was not until 3 July that they learned of a shootout between the Mexican Army and a group of alleged criminals, in which 12 men died.
A video published by El Universal this week revealed how soldiers relentlessly pursued a pickup truck, hitting it with at least 243 shots. At the end of the video, a soldier approaches the back of the truck and shouts: “He’s alive!” Another responds with the order: “Kill the fucker”.
Lying in the back of the truck was Arturo, next to Ángel Nuñez, a 27-year-old mechanic who had disappeared on 27 June, and Damián Genovez Tercero, an 18-year-old migrant from Chiapas, who had not been seen since 24 June when he went out to look for work with his cousin Alejandro Tercero, who remains missing.
All three had been shot dead, but unlike the others killed in the shootout they were not carrying weapons or wearing uniforms and had been bound by their hands and feet. The evidence suggests that they had been abducted by a criminal gang and that the soldiers illegally executed them.
“My son didn’t deserve this kind of death,” said Hector Garza, Arturo’s father. “I wouldn’t wish this on any other parent, it’s too much pain, it tears at my heart and the truth is I feel betrayed by Mexico.”
Unfortunately, these were not isolated events. Amnesty International and the Nuevo Laredo Human Rights Committee have been denouncing grave human rights violations in Mexico and in the state of Tamaulipas for decades, often at the hands of the armed forces.
The militarized public security strategy of successive governments, combined with rampant impunity, has created a lethal environment in which the Army and Navy continue to commit crimes under international law, such as extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances, in Tamaulipas and many parts of the country.
We have seen how the authorities often blame the victims, portraying them as hitmen or members of organized crime. In many cases they treat their families with contempt and tell them they have no right to seek justice. Criminals must be brought to justice in accordance with the law, and victims must be protected, not criminalized, nor have their lives put at risk. - Amnesty International
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