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Ciudad Juarez murders exceed 400
by Sandra Beasley
Staff Writer
Three mothers and a sister cry out for their murdered loved ones, victims along with more than 400 other young women who have been slaughtered or have disappeared in the Mexican cities of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City since 1993. Sexual assaults rank high in the Juarez and Chihuahua murders. Nearly 40 percent of the women were raped, their bodies mutilated, their hands tied and strands of hair cut. Most of the victims were slim with brown hair. A majority were assaulted on their way home from work. Sadly, hundreds of the murder cases are still unsolved due to the failings of state-level officials in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua.
Attendees of the March symposium had a chance to hear from forensic scientists, university professors, artists, documentary film directors, book authors and journalists who came to discuss their research, experiences and why it’s important to keep the story of the Juarez and Chihuahua killings alive. The number of brutal homicides so far exceeds the Mexican national average and the rates in border cities that the term “femicide” has evolved from the trauma surrounding Juarez and Chihuahua. Despite 12 years of the disproportionately high numbers of “femicides,” the violence continues unstemmed. Diana Washington Valdez, an investigative reporter for The El Paso Times believes from her years of research that there are multiple killers. She told The Puma Press, “There are several lines of investigation that point to the killers,” who Valdez believes include the following: 1. Two or more serial killers still on the loose; 2. Low level drug dealers; 3. Two violent gangs as ways of initiating new members; 4. A group of powerful men who have killed without fear of punishment; 5. Copy cats taking advantage of these scenarios to hide their own crimes. Still, the majority of cases remain unresolved. According to a report released August 2005 by the Mexican National Commission for Human Rights, of 367 cases opened by authorities between January 1993-August 2005, 169 cases were resolved in court; 184 were still in process and 14 cases were closed. Thirty-six were registered as disappearances. While the Mexico State Department in a 2005 report writes that a vast amount of the cases have been “solved,” Guadalupe Morfin, the head of Mexico’s federal Commission for the Prevention and Elimination of Violence Against Women, in Ciudad Juarez questions the integrity of the investigations. She told the NMSU symposium, “It’s true there are 177 guilty sentences for the nearly 400 murders, but there is still a layer of impunity in the (represented) cases.” Coerced Confessions
U.S. citizens Cythia Kieker and her husband Ulllises Perabal, who were arrested in May of 2003, report being tortured to confess to femicide. Prior to their arrest, the musician-artist couple settled in Chihuahua, owned a jewelry store and actively participated in marches against the disappearances of the women. “In May of 2003 there were officers of Chihuahua who knocked on our door and took us to the old state police academy,” the couple told the symposium. “When they took us from our home, they dragged us with bags over our heads, they gave us electrical shots, they wet us, they beat us and at night they handcuffed us to our beds. They took our friends to use them as witnesses who were also tortured and this whole time they told us that we would have to repeat a false story they invented to confess to (the murder of ) a girl that had disappeared that we didn’t know (16 yr old Viviana Rayas in Chihuahua City).” Kieker and Perabal’s detentions were condemned by Amnesty International, numerous other human rights groups and even Guadalupe Morfin, President Fox’s Special Commissioner for Violence against Women in Ciudad Juarezs. The couple were acquitted in December 2004 and quickly relocated to the U.S. “We lost everything we had in Chihuahua...,” says Kieker.” More Homicide High profile lawyer Sergio Dante Almaraz, who was scheduled to speak at the NMSU symposium on torture and human rights, was gunned down in Juarez, Mexico just days before the symposium. Almarez was the defense lawyer for Javier “Cerillo” Garc’a Uribe, one of two bus drivers accused of killing eight women whose bodies were found in a cotton field in 2001. Commenting on the alleged crime, Diana Washington Valdez of The El Paso Times says, “We come to expect these murders to take place around these events—not necessarily because of them, but the timing is always suspicious because they were probably going to kill this lawyer anyways, but they time it to send a message.” Defying his killer’s quest to silence him forever, Almaraz’s voice rings out through his videotaped interview presented at the NMSU symposium. In it he exposes the corruption in the local judicial system as it dealt with his client. He says, “What happened to the two scapegoats? They were brutally beaten and three days blindfolded. They were forced to make statements in front of a television camera without a defense lawyer and forced to incriminate themselves, declaring themselves responsible for murdering eight women found a cotton field in 2001 in Ciudad Juarez.” As to who actually was responsible for the killings, Almarez says that the girls had different times of death and some of the corpses’ skin appeared to have been refrigerated for a long time. “All wealthy individuals, former ex chiefs, ex commanders, all have ranches (where) they... have walk-in refrigerators holding up to 50 tons,” said Almarez. The Killers Almarez is not alone at pointing the finger towards Mexico’s affluent class of individuals or high-ranking Mexican officials. Valdez of The El Paso Times puts herself out on a limb. In her book “Cosecha de Mujeres” (“Harvest of Women”) she writes, “At the end of 2003 information arrived at the FBI... on some places and people...from Juarez that could have something to do with the disappearances and deaths of young women... v“...Mexican federal investigations contain accounts of officials and other persons who facilitated orgies where they abused women whose bodies were found afterwards. The investigators also say that some of the people also participated in the murders. Among the sur-names known to US and Mexican officers as allegedly knowing the facts possibly being implicated are Molinar, Sotelo, Hank, Rivera, Ferandez, Zaragoza, Cabada, Molina, Fuentas, Hernandez, Urbina, Cano, Martinez, Dominguez, and others.”
Commenting on her investigation of the femicides, Valdez says, “I can actually say I went as far as I could take it, and it took me seven years to get to the bottom of things but I did it....I knew it was bad but I never thought that bad and intensive and that high, and I am not exaggerating. Of her personal safety, Valdez says, “I can’t go back to Juarez anymore. I haven’t been back in a 1 1⁄2 years. I knew the day would come and they would come looking for me—El Paso also. If they want to get you, they can. That is all there is to it.” As to why she put herself at risk to investigate the murders, Valdez says that her intention was always to expose as much as possible because as she put it, “Frankly, we are not going to see the kind of things that you would like to see like the real authorities going after the real killers and putting them in jail.” The perpetrators allegedly include public officials, high profile businessmen, politicians and members of powerful families. In an NPR April 13, 2006 news story John Burnett quotes Valdez as saying, “The authorities know who the killers are, and nothing’s being done about it. We have two issues here: people who are getting away with murder, and.....authorities who have been accomplices, and so this makes them crimes of the states.” New Routes to Justice ASU West professor of political theory, William Simmons, has for the past three years reviewed international legal institutions that have developed remedies for gross human rights violations, such as in Ciudad Juarez, in hopes of seeing which of these would be most effective. As part the NMSU symposium panel, The Loss of Life and Human Rights, Simmons revealed his findings: • The first remedy involves bringing the cases to the Inter-American Courts of Human Rights; • The second remedy involves bringing the civil case to U.S. federal court under the secure law- Alien Court Claims Act. Regarding the first, Simmons says that the Inter-American Court offers very important mandates over other national courts or institutions in all cases when the government has been found violating human rights. It can order the government to take steps to investigate crimes or take specific steps to prevent further abuses. Additionally, the courts can order countries to memorialize the victim such as through scholarships or direct monuments. The courts can also order the Mexican Government to take concrete steps to protect the lives of specific individuals. Because cases can take up to four or five years once summated to the Inter-American Court courts, Simmons believes that at the same time, the cases can be pursued through the U.S. courts under the Alien Claims Tort Act, a 200-year-old law that has recently been used for several very important human rights cases. It allows foreign nationals to sue officials from their own country in U.S. federal courts for violations of the law of nations or U.S. treaties. “The best case in my opinion in this situation is to bring a case against both local and state officials in Mexico who have tortured individuals and by whom community women have suffered,” says Simmons. On March 21, the Center of Justice and International Law received notice that the International Commission has agreed to look into allegations that officials in Mexico mishandled the investigation into the killing of Silvia Arce, 29, in Ciudad Juarez and allegations that state officials in Chihuahua planted evidence against the boyfriend of Paloma Angeliica Escobar Ledesma to link him to the murder of the 16-yr.-old girl whose body was found in 2002. Waiving a document from the Washington-based International American on Human Rights at the NMSU symposium, Eva Arce, (mother of Sylvia Arce) says confidently, “There will be punishment of the guilty who work for the government who were supposed to study this case...I don’t care who they are from the Governor, from the criminal justice. They need to be punished. I want to know where my daughter is. First of all, I know that my daughter has been murdered and they don’t want to do anything.” |
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