Mexico City.- Father Alejandro Solalinde Guerra returns from two week Europe speaking tour. In Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, Santander, Geneva, Berne and Rome, the migrants rights defender explained the impact of the ongoing violence in Mexico on migration. Solalinde's visit to Europe, May 22 – June 7, comes after serious threats against him.
In Spain, Switzerland and Italy, Solalinde repeatedly denounced the vulnerability of migrants in Mexico. The priest said that it reflects the current reality of the country. The irregularity of Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans, encouters a situation marked by disputes between drug cartels and allegations of collusion with Mexican authorities. The 'Brochure on migrants kidnapping' (Cuaderno sobre secuestros de migrantes) from Migrant House in Saltillo, Coahuila, prepared together with the Human Rights Centre 'Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez' and published this year, shows the abuse of migrants in Mexico, who are usually victims of abduction and forced disappearance –if an authority is involved in the events. Migrants may suffer in captivity forced recruitment, torture and trafficking, among other violations of personal security. The numbers of kidnappings of the National Commission of Human Rights (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, CNDH) illustrate the scope of the situation: from April to September 2010, the CNDH documented 214 events with 11.333 kidnapping victims.
In Barcelona, Solalinde explained this context to the Catalan Agency for Cooperation of the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Committee on Solidarity and Cooperation of the Catalan Parliament, and attended the public lecture 'Criminalization of human rights: the cases of Guatemala and Mexico'. Later, in Madrid, he met with representatives of the Congress of Deputies and the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation. He also traveled to Bilbao and Santander where he met with authorities, foundations and local social movements, and took part in several public events.
Father Solalinde moved then to Geneva to meet with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who expressed her willingness to support his return to the migrants shelter in Ixtepec, Oaxaca. He also met with representatives of the Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Defenders and several civil society organizations based in Geneva. In the capital, Bern, he held a roundtable with the participation of organizations like ProPaz Switzerland, Amnesty International and Catholic Lenten Fund, representatives of the departments of human rights and security of the Swiss Foreign Ministry and the parliamentary Anne Suhner and Lucrezia Meier-Schatz.
Finally, in Rome, Solalinde presented the situation of migrants and the difficulties of his case to the Human Rights Committee of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of Italy. Representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Interior also met the defender. Finally, the NGO International Civil Service convened a public event "Migrazioni, diritti and Repressione in Messico".
Since 2008, Father Solalinde has reported numerous cases of official corruption and kidnapping practices against migrants. Therefore, the defender has been victim of threats and attacks against him. In April and March, just before starting the tour, Solalinde received several death threats, increasing his risk. Solalinde point out that the insecurity of people working in shelters is because of the same lack of protection of human rights of migrants. Pastoral mobility has registered in the past two years an increase in levels of violence against migrants defender, counting more than sixty attacks.
More information
"José Pilar Alvárez y Alejandro Solalinde visitaron varias ciudades del Estado Español en el marco de la gira organizada por PBI" (Spanish), PBI Spain News, June 2012.
"Pater Solalinde verstärkt sein Unterstützungsnetz" (German), PBI Suisse News, June 2012.
Interviewed in Italy: "En México se mata a migrantes y se amenaza a quienes los defienden: Alejandro Solalinde" (Spanish), desInformémonos, June 2012.
Cuaderno sobre Secuestro de Migrantes, Dimensión, contexto y testimonios de la experiencia de la migración en tránsito por México (Spanish), Human Rights Centre 'Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez' and Migrant House in Saltillo, December de 2011.
Informe Especial sobre secuestro de migrantes en México (Spanish), National Commission of Human Rights, February 2011.