Mexico City, 7 July 2015.- Between May and December 2015, PBI Mexico will publish a series of interviews with Human Rights Defenders which we accompany or with whom we maintain a close relationship. This month we present an interview with Father Oscar Enriquez, director of the Paso del Norte Human Rights Center.
Due to the risk situation faced by the members of the Paso del Norte Human Rights Center and the importance of their work, PBI started accompanying them in September 2013. The center was the first organization accompanied by our team in Northern Mexico.
Oscar Enriquez Perez, founder of the Human Rights Centre Paso del Norte
My name is Oscar Enriquez Perez. For the last 45 years I have been a priest in the Catholic Church, working in a parish in a humble sector of Ciudad Juarez. I am one of the founders and the director of the Human Rights Centre Paso del Norte.
My work has always been based in liberation theology with an option for the poor and with a strong social concern. I see the human rights work as an extension of the social commitment due to my faith that comes from the Gospel. And yes, this human rights work has changed my life. I look for a balance between my pastoral activity and this social dimension, which is also part of my Christian commitment.
Photo: Father Oscar, director of the HRC Paso del Norte © PBI Mexico
The Human Rights Centre Paso del Norte and the demands of victims
We started the center for human rights in 2001 due to a specific case of torture. A whole group of us wanted to start this project in Ciudad Juarez because there were not any human rights centers here previously. From the beginning we have been working with the most vulnerable and poorest groups of the population.
Over the last years we have made it our priority to support victims and this is now one of our areas of work, especially in cases of torture and enforced disappearance. We are continuously facing the pain and suffering of the families and of the victims of clear injustices. It is a constant learning process to see from their eyes the reality we live in and this perspective, the one from their pain, guides us as a human rights center and reaffirms our commitment to truth and justice.
Another lesson we have learned, is the need for solidarity, both internally and across organizations. We are part of a very extensive movement that seeks to change the conditions of injustice we are living in, because here there are neither proper investigations, nor a political will to prosecute crimes. And if we look at the national and international situation, with less and less democratic governments, we see that the criminalization of social protests will continue. I think there will be more risks in the future. I do not believe that this situation will change for the better. Reflecting about the continuous violations of human rights that we see, I think we have work as a human rights center for long while.
When the victims reach the center the only thing that matters to them is freedom for their family members. They want us to work from the legal perspective. Our approach is to try to help them to understand what they are experiencing. They are asked to participate in meetings. We currently have a fairly broad group of families of victims of torture and enforced disappearance. They know each other and they meet regularly. We want them to understand the rights that they are demanding and we consider them human rights defenders. Among the victims, most of them have poor or humble backgrounds.
We would like to have more cooperation in the center from the young people of less privileged neighborhoods. But it is complicated; there is not much interest in participating in democratic processes, in human rights. Here there is not a strong sensitivity to the social issues. This is a huge challenge. Only to the extent that these young people have strong experiences, they or their families develop the sensitivity for these topics.
Attacks against Team Paso del Norte
The team has very personal motivations and choices of faith, so they do not see this work just as a job. This gives them a solid ground for assuming risky situations. We have had workshops that helped us to speak about our personal situations and how we feel. That has created a group consciousness that allows us to support each other in extreme situations and to figure out how to live with the risk of attacks. Our offices were raided in 2011. One Sunday night a group of patrols surrounded the center and in a very violent manner, with bars, broke down the doors and searched everything. The team at that time lived in constant fear. It was very complicated to get over these feelings although we had known the risks when we made the decision to work in cases of torture and enforced disappearance.
We know the National Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, because we had to ask for its support. Both a lawyer from our center and a family of victims in one of the cases we defend were harassed by judicial police. We consider, as a center, that we did not receive adequate or effective responses from the National Mechanism. Yes, they came but the security measures were not adequate.
Cooperation with human rights organizations inside and outside Mexico
We value the networking and work to create networks, such as a regional network in Coahuila. We are also part of the National Network All Rights for All. We value also the presence and solidarity of international human rights organizations such as Peace Brigades International accompanying our work as human rights defenders. Their presence brings more security and visibility for the work of our center with authorities of the city and of the state. Chihuahua is one of the states where there have been more risks, threats and killings of human rights defenders and we believe that the presence of PBI will help. We have had almost no dialogue with the authorities, perhaps due to our history and due to the cases that have followed. We hope that the presence of PBI will help us.
Photo: PBI volunteer and Father Oscar sign the renewal of the agreement for PBI's accompaniment to the center © PBI Mexico
The context: violence in Ciudad Juarez and the state's response
The border has always had strong social problems, being a border of countries. There is population living in a situation of cultural detachment. There have always been social problems, homelessness and lack of work. There have always been gangs and drug trafficking. The Juarez Cartel began to organize themselves since the seventies and from that time went on growing.
Ciudad Juarez has always been a violent city, but we never foresaw that it could reach the levels that we have lived since 2008. It became to be considered the most violent city in the world, with a percentage of 190-230 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. The Mexican government declared a war to the drug traffickers and the violence escalated.
The state responded with the Chihuahua Joint Operation. They confronted the organized crime with “hard handed” federal strategies. This was accepted by the governor and implemented in the municipalities, which gave increasingly decisive and highly responsible positions of control to members of the army in order to deal with the public safety challenges. The federation, the state through the governor and the police forces and the municipalities participate in the Chihuahua Joint Operation.
The Armed Forces were here two years from 2008 to 2010 and there were many abuses. Then the Federal Police took over the coordination of security and they were worse than the army, so we got scared. It was during the time that the Federal Police were in control that our offices were raided. You cannot imagine how many cases we knew that we could not take, because we were exceeded by them. Nowadays the allegations of abuse and torture are against municipal police and the judicial police that investigate crimes in this state.
Currently the percentage of violent killings has dropped, but a hidden violence remains. The causes that led to the whole climate of violence continue and there continues to be cases of murder, extortion, femicide and kidnappings of professionals. Since 2011 we have an army member working in the post of State Minister for Public Security. He commands a very repressive, violent and authoritarian police force, who committed many abuses, especially against young people and poor young people. There is no way to confront or to denounce these abuses.
Photo: PBI volunteers together with the team of Paso del Norte Human Rights Center © PBI Mexico
One result of the work of Paso del Norte: The Figueroa case
After spending two years and five months in prison, on June 10, 2014, the brothers Juan Antonio and Jesus Iván Figueroa and Misael Sánchez Gómez Fausto, were released without charges by a court in Ciudad Juarez. His brother Luis Figueroa Adrián Gómez, underage at the time of detention and arrested for the same offense, had been acquitted in August 2013.
The Human Rights Centre Paso del Norte assumed the legal defense of the Figueroa brothers at the request of their families.
This case arose when on January 18, 2012 the federal police arbitrarily arrested five youths who were friends. After being tortured they declared themselves guilty of the crimes they were been blamed of. They were accused of extortion, import of arms, possession of drugs and of being part of organized crime. They were confined under “arraigo” ( this is a form of preventive detention under which people remain arrested but not yet formally charged with any offense before a judge), and they appeared on television. Their families learned from watching television that they were arrested. Their families were impatient, despaired, for years there was not any legal development of the cases. They had suffered a lot. Some of the mothers did not see their children since the day of the arrest and they knew that they had been tortured; they saw (on TV) that they could not stand. This has been a very painful case. We see the stubbornness of the authorities. They are this way because at the root of the problem, we have a state that does not recognize that their police torture and wants to give an image that they don´t do it. When there have been hearings, the imprisoned person’s relatives and our lawyer who leads the legal defense have been harassed.
They were imprisoned in Nayarit and Veracruz but the files were in Guadalajara. This made the legal defense very complicated. For a year and a half we were not able to start the hearings, the federal agents accusing them did not go to declare in court. The lawyer went to Nayarit, Guadalajara and Veracruz, time passed. All of this cost a lot of money and we watched the families’ concern grow because we were not achieving any progress. The human rights organization CECETI (Collective Against Torture and Impunity) applied the Istanbul Protocol. The National Human Rights Commission did it also and an issued recommendation came out saying they had been tortured. The Attorney General's Office did not accept these reports and wanted to apply (the protocol) for the third time.
This case is an example of a case we won through a successful approach from a legal and psychosocial perspective as well as from the work accompanying the family members.
* This interview was conducted by Susana Nistal and translated by Annie Hintz