Inter Press Service
20-APR-99
By Pilar Franco

MEXICO CITY, (Apr. 20) IPS - United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson plans to visit Mexico this year in an effort to secure a commitment by the government to check the deterioration of the country's human rights record, according to activists.

Mexico's foreign ministry confirmed last week that it had invited Robinson to the country, but failed to specify dates. The All Rights for All National Network told IPS, however, that the visit would most likely take place in late October.

Local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are now hammering out their strategies to take the greatest possible advantage of Robinson's visit to Mexico, which they described as "a historic event."

Robinson intends her stay in Mexico to take on a broader character than just a diplomatic visit, said the technical secretary of All Rights for All, Michael Chamberlin, who met the High Commissioner last month.

The High Commissioner is also coming with the aim of signing, with local authorities, "a broad agreement to establish a mechanism to curb the deterioration of the human rights situation," said Chamberlin.

He added that the UN official had made her visit conditional on a prior trip to Mexico by the UN Special Rapporteur on Summary Executions, who is expected to arrive next month.

The High Commissioner's visit will also require previous on the ground investigations by a special team of experts, before the agreement with the Mexican government of Ernesto Zedillo can be signed.

Representatives of more than 100 Mexican human rights organizations flew to Geneva last month to denounce, at the 55th session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, the "deterioration" of the situation of human rights here.

The delegations travelled to Switzerland with the aim of insisting that Robinson's proposed visit to Mexico be firmed up.

Mexico ranks third in the world in terms of number of forced disappearances, and is also one of the countries with the highest number of deaths in detention, according to local NGOs and international rights watchdogs.

The Jesuit-led Miguel Agustin Pro center took files on 114 "disappearances," more than 250 extrajudicial executions and 1,300 arbitrary arrests documented from 1996 to 1998 to the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.

The local rights groups told the U.N. Commission of the "growing militarisation" of areas of Mexico predominantly populated by indigenous communities.

The panorama that Robinson will find in Mexico includes actions and abuses by paramilitary groups in Chiapas, the impoverished southeastern state where the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) emerged in 1994.

The number of deaths at the hands of irregular armed groups in the predominantly indigenous state have climbed since 1995, said the NGOs.

Unofficial statistics indicate that 16,000 people have been displaced by the violence in Chiapas. The displaced are living in subhuman conditions, and their safety is constantly violated, say local activists.

Robinson "told us in Geneva of her interest in visiting Chiapas, as well as another state, which could be Guerrero," also located in the south, said Chamberlin.

Robinson's visit to Mexico "will give greater support to efforts to win respect for human rights here," a representative of the Mexican Commission for the Defence and Promotion of Human Rights told IPS.

It is "of vital importance for UN bodies to pronounce themselves on the situation, which we have denounced as grave," said the coordinator of the Commission's legal aid program, Salvador Tinajero.

Human rights groups in Mexico have turned to various UN bodies to insist on the need for more support for their fight against "the inefficacy of the institutions in charge of upholding justice" in Mexico, said Tinajero.

The sharpest critiques of Mexico's human rights record are contained in reports by the rights watchdog Amnesty International, according to which the impunity under which violations of basic rights are committed in Mexico has become endemic.