Here, written principally by CIP Associate Abigail Poe, is an overview of the increasingly acrimonious debate over the human-rights conditions in the proposed aid package to Mexico. Military aid to Colombia, Bolivia and El Salvador in the 1980s has all been subject to similar conditions in the past. The Senate language offers an important protection and should stay in the final bill.
The Senate and the House both approved versions of the 2008 supplemental appropriations bill including the so-called "Mérida Initiative," hundreds of millions of dollars in new aid for Mexico and Central America.
Both houses’ bills attached human-rights conditions freezing the delivery of some military assistance until the State Department certifies that they are being fulfilled. The Senate version of these conditions is more stringent and specific, however, so much that the Mexican government is threatening to refuse the aid. Mexican officials are claiming that, as written, the Merida Initiative threatens Mexico’s sovereignty and would require changes to the country’s constitution.
These complaints appear to stem mainly from the provision that halts aid unless alleged human rights violations by soldiers are being prosecuted by civilian authorities rather than military courts, and a condition baring assistance to authorities involved in corruption.
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and its director, "Drug Czar" John Walters, argue that the aid should not be stipulated on human rights conditions and that Mexican authorities accused of human rights, corruption or other criminal violations should not be prohibited from receiving the aid. According to Walters, the human rights provisions are “counterproductive” and they risk “sabotaging” the cooperation between Mexico and the United States in the fight against drugs and violence. From AP:
Walters denounced a "cartoon view" of Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s administration as "fighting and dying in order to get U.S. money so they can violate human rights."
"That’s insulting and a grotesque lie," Walters said. "I don’t think any serious person believes that. And if somebody is making an argument on the basis of that cartoon, it’s about time we said stop it. There’s something serious at stake here."
However, as Amnesty International has recently documented, Mexico’s military and police have a long history of human rights violations that have gone unpunished. And, as pointed out by Senator Leahy, in his description of the Senate version of the bill: “Since when is it bad policy, or an infringement of anything, to insist that American taxpayer dollars not be given to corrupt, abusive police or military forces in a country whose justice system has serious flaws and rarely punishes official misconduct?”
A House-Senate Conference Committee is reconciling differences between the two appropriations bills, and could finish work well before the July 4th recess. The appropriators are under heavy pressure from both the Mexican government and the White House to pass the Mérida Initiative without human rights conditions. To what extent will they give in? Will the final result resemble the Senate version, which prompted criticism by the Mexican government? Or will it be closer to the less stringent human rights conditions of the House version of the bill?
Will Mexico even reject conditions similar to the House version? If so, it should send up big warning signs about the proposed aid. As Amesty International’s Renata Rendón put it in today’s Chicago Tribune, "If human rights do sabotage this agreement, we should think twice about who exactly we are trying to work with."
See below for a side-by-side comparison of the Senate and House versions of the bill for aid to Mexico.
Breakdown of difference in human rights conditions:
- Police complaint commissions:
- House: Improving the transparency and accountability of federal police forces and engaging state and municipal authorities to improve transparency and accountability of state and municipal police forces through mechanisms such as police complaint commissions:
- Senate: Establishes police complaint commissions with authority and independence to receive complaints and carry out effective investigations
- Difference: Senate version is more straightforward about what must be done
- House: Ensuring meaningful engagement with civil society to monitor efforts to combat drug trafficking and related violent crime, judicial reform, institution building, and rule of law activities to ensure due process and the protection of freedom of expression, association, and assembly in accordance with Mexican and international law
- Senate: Establishing an independent mechanism, with representation from civil society, to monitor programs to combat drug trafficking and related violence and organized crime, judicial reform, anti-corruption, and rule of law activities to ensure due process and the protection of freedoms of expression, association, and assembly and rights of privacy, in accordance with Mexican and international law.
- Differences: Senate version actually establishes a mechanism to monitor the programs, and adds the monitoring of anti-corruption activities and the protection of rights of privacy to the list.
- House: two provisions:
- Ensuring that, in accordance with applicable Mexican law, the Mexican armed forces and the Federal police forces are cooperating with civilian prosecutors and judicial authorities in investigating and prosecuting in the civilian justice system those individuals, including military personnel, who have been credibly alleged under Mexican law to have committed violations of internationally recognized human rights, and, consistent with Mexican and international law, is vigorously enforcing the prohibition on the use of testimony obtained through torture or other ill-treatment.
- The Federal Public Security Secretary and the Minister of Defense, respectively, in accordance with applicable Mexican law, are suspending or placing on administrative duty, those members of the Federal police and armed forces who have been credibly alleged under Mexican law, to have committed violations of internationally recognized human rights or participated in corrupt acts and have established policies that reward respect for human rights, in particular regarding the use of force.
- Senate: breaks the above down into three provisions:
- (D) is enforcing the prohibition on the use of testimony obtained through torture or other ill-treatment in violation of Mexican and international law;
- (E) is ensuring that the Mexican military justice system is transferring all cases involving allegations of human rights violations by military personnel to civilian prosecutors and judicial authorities, and that the armed forces are fully cooperating with civilian prosecutors and judicial authorities in prosecuting and punishing in civilian courts members of the armed forces who have been credibly alleged to have committed such violations; and
- (F) is ensuring that federal and state police forces are fully cooperating with prosecutors and judicial authorities in prosecuting and punishing members of the police forces who have been credibly alleged to have committed violations of human rights.
- Difference
- The Senate version is much more specific and separates out the military and the police. It also makes the prohibition of use of testimony obtained through torture into its own line item, instead of being an add-on to an item as it is in the House bill. The Senate also stipulates that the Mexican armed forces and federal and state police forces fully cooperate with civilian prosecutors and judicial authorities, not only in the prosecution of those credibly alleged to have committed violations of human rights, but also in the punishment phase. In the House version, those credibly alleged to have committed human rights violations are subjected to suspension or being placed on administrative duty, a much less harsh punishment than a civilian prosecutor/judge would offer.
- Who investigates/prosecutes and punishes?
- House: The Attorney General and other relevant authorities of the Mexican Government are investigating and prosecuting members of the Mexican armed forces and police forces who have been credibly alleged under Mexican law to have committed violations of internationally recognized human rights.
- Senate: Civilian prosecutors and judicial authorities are investigating, prosecuting and punishing members of the Mexican military and police forces who have been credibly alleged to have committed human rights violations.
- Difference: The House version has members of the Mexican government in charge of investigating and prosecuting members of the armed forces and police forces who have violated human rights. However, the Senate version takes it out of the government’s hands, and says that those who violate human rights must be prosecuted and punished by civilian prosecutors and judicial authorities.
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House of Representatives (approved May 15) |
Senate (approved May 22) |
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Mexico |
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INCLE, FMF, Economic Support Fund |
INCLE |
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Total Funds |
Not more than $296,500,000 available immediately until Sept. 30, 2009; $103,500,000 made available on Oct. 1, 2008 through Sept. 30, 2009 to combat drug trafficking and related violent crime, and for judicial reform, institution building, and rule of law activities. Of that amount, not less than $73,500,000 is allocated to judicial reform, institution building and rule of law activities |
Not more than $350,000,000 available immediately through Sept. 30, 2009 to combat drug trafficking and related violence and organized crime, and for judicial reform, anti-corruption, and rule of law activities |
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Economic Support Fund |
N/A |
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INCLE |
Up to $53,500,000 of these funds are available for assistance for Mexico as of Oct. 1, 2008. |
$1,000,000 of the funds appropriated under the economic support fund will be available for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico |
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FMF |
Up to $66,500,000 of these funds are available for assistance for Mexico immediately; An additional $50,000,000 of these funds are available for assistance for Mexico as of Oct. 1, 2008. |
N/A |
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Allocation |
25% of the INCLE and FMF funds shall be withheld from obligation until the Secretary of State reports to the Committees on Appropriations on the requirements described below |
Same as House version |
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June 7th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I don’t understand why civilian prosecutors are so important. Bad people come in all stripes, not just from the military side. Calderon sent in troops to fight the traffickers because so much of the civilian infrastructure – cops, courts, prosecutors – was corrupted by the drug trade. Why would an UNAM (now known as FARC U)-educated prosecutor necessarily be more virtuous and human-rights-oriented than a soldier who literally puts his life on the line and may even lay it down to defend Mexican civilians from drug dealers? I don’t see the wisdom of insisting on a corrupted civilian establishment as a condition of taking US aid. It seems to me that Leahy’s plan is a plan designed for failure.
June 7th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Another question: What is meant by ‘credible’ allegations? I think a lot of ambitious would-be politicians and people in the pay of traffickers would find that attractive grounds for making up human rights violations if there are slippery, politically-driven standards on what’s ‘credible.’ How do you say ‘Tawana’ or ‘Nifong’ in Spanish?
June 7th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I would imagine credible allegations would entail physical evidence and reliable eyewitness accounts.
I’m guessing I’m a bit older than you, but I do remember the level of hysteria that the right, especially the Reagan administration with the able assistance of A.M. Rosenthal of the new York Times generated in denouncing the allegations of atrocities committed by the Atlacatl Battalion at El Mozote until the remains of the 200 plus men, women and children turned up. Of course if this had been pursued actively at the time, maybe the Atlacatl Battalion wouldn’t have felt that their impunity would have enabled them to kill six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter eight years later.
June 7th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
In other words, given the amount of money sunk into El Salvador during the 1980’s by the US Government and the sheer brutality of the Salvadoran right, Congress is employing a sensible once bitten-twice shy approach to this. Good for them.
June 8th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Mexican legislators told Sandinista Chris Dodd his interference in their internal affairs was not welcome. For Chris, this isn’t the Sandinista glory days, where Nicaraguan ruling commissars welcomed him with open arms and Bianca was at his feet.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking_news/story/562284.html
June 8th, 2008 at 9:35 am
I live in Mexico. Have now for the last 7 years. Best move I’ve ever made. Then, the US had to have their dirty little drug war follow me via Plan Mexico. I’m also a LEAP member and have several local cops that I have coffee with. When asked how much of PM they’d see, as their being the first, front line defense being on the streets. Their response? “Not one peso!”
I’ve always believed in the “Land of the Free” concept and yearn to see it come to fruition. However, when top administration “fruitcakes” say that human rights aren’t important, well, I begin to see my country for what it has become: AMERIKA.
We’ve always been a people concerned with human rights. Look at Bosnia, Middle East and others. Yet, let the word “drug” be used and human rights, or any rights for that matter, no longer exist. WHY? When all these drugs (all 7 of them) were legal, we had none of the problems we have today.
Rather than do the obvious and simply channel funding away from the cartels and into government coffures, the spirit today is “more blood and bullets!” It’s not just Mexico that has a problem with human rights. It’s the US of A, also, both interior and exterior. That, my friends, has to change! We have forgotten our own ideals and been whisked away by the loony feeding frenzy of the lying Prohibs. Well, the feeding frenzy is coming to an end so they’re trying to spread their message of death and destruction to neighboring countries.
I applaude Mexico for NOT accepting Plan Mexico, even if it IS for the wrong reason.
June 8th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Camilla,
You are joking with the whole Sandinista Chris Dodd thing aren’t you? Thats pretty silly.
Best,
Will
June 8th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Unlike you, Camilla, I expect that if our tax dollars go to another nation to aid it, that the other nation respect their citizens’ human rights.
June 8th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Will,
That’s her metier. Dodd made the following statement in the article Camilla linked to:
What is there to dispute in that statement?
June 8th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Will: What’s to joke about? He was down there making a fool of himself, not me. Oh, how he worshipped that ‘revolucion!’ in those palmy days of his youth. I wonder if he’s up for reliving them – the chicks, the rifles, the beards, the uniforms, the ravings about the yanqui imperialismo, the whole hipster thing. What do you think?
June 8th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Randy Paul: Unlike you, I respect that Mexico ALREADY IS a democracy, not a rightwing junta. It became the state it is in the 1930s after some very painful civil wars, and modernized significantly as a democracy with the election of PAN’s Vicente Fox. It’s gotten even stronger as a democracy since then. As such, Chris Dodd doesn’t have a right to put on his pith helmet, get his riding crop out and slap those brown-skinned people into submission to his idea of what their country should be like, down to the last New England-happy detail. That’s the problem with the left, any democracy whose population doesn’t elect a rabid antiamerican leftist is immediately painted as Argentina or Chile or Guatemala circa 1976. The left needs to quit living in the past and recognize that they don’t rule the region anymore, either as an ideology or as pith helmet imperialists ordering the brown-skinned locals around.
You have to accept that Mexico is a democracy and recognize that it has commitment to human rights and rule of law – no matter what Indymedia claims. The experience of the last few years demonstrates that strongly. Mexico’s not our gringo kicking boy anymore.
June 8th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Camilla,
I assume you were okay with U.S. intervention in the 1980s, the arming of Contras that committed a whole slew of human rights violations, the mining of Nicaragua’s harbor, the efforts to economically strangle the country, the direct financing/training of an electoral opposition to defeat the Sandinistas? That strikes me as a lot more “pith helmet” than Dodd’s “leftist” rhetoric.
In any event, Randy is correct, the U.S. has the sovereign right to place conditions on any aid it sends and Mexico has the sovereign right to refuse it if they disagree with the conditions. Of course, the drug problem is largely a demand driven phenomenon and U.S. policy is a pretty hypocritcal one since our drug consumers are helping to fund the various narcotrafficking networks that operate in the region, until greater priority is given to this issue there will be little progress in the U.S. or Mexican “drug war”.
Best,
Will
June 8th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Will,
Yes. I fought for it, in fact. I learned firsthand from all the Nicaraguan refugees in my part of the US just how evil and confiscatory the Marxist Sandinistas were, how many Miskito Indians they enjoyed killing, their indoctrination camps, the Sandinista torture chambers, and the smearing of an authentic people’s movement of innocent civilians who’d fled for their lives against a brutal Cuban-directed Marxist regime across the Honduran border that had confiscated everything they owned, rich and poor alike and had no choice but to fight it. Danny boy, of course, still sits prettily on his stolen wealth. Contrary to Sandinista myth, most Contras were poor farmers, not oligarchs of Marxist caricature. If you ever knew any, you’d know what I mean.
The US can place conditions on the Mexican aid, but if the conditions are too outrageous, and if you listen to the Mexicans, they say they are too outrageous, then it’s obviously an insincere offer done by a political grandstander. Forcing another country to change its constitution is asking an awful lot. How would we like to be forced to change our constitution over something we wanted from Mexico? I don’t think we’d like it at all.
I think the key is to get a mutual agreement with Mexico that doesn’t humilate them, doesn’t make them feel like colonial vassals, respects their autonomy, treats them like equals.
Because I do agree with you strongly that half the problem is the drug consumption on our end. I can’t stand rightwingers who think this is purely a Mexican problem and the only solution is a fence. I see this as two way, and therefore, we can’t dictate terms to Mexico at a time of urgency, we need to bend a little and they need to bend a little. Dodd, though, is such a hardened ideologue and so secretly pro-drug-legalization that it makes me wonder if he is sincere at all about a deal. He needs to respect other countries even if they are not like him.
best,
Camilla
June 9th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Among this huge pile of horse manure I found one point to which I MIGHT contribute something, but with lots of caveats because I’m not a lawyer. I maybe wrong but several years ago I heard this line from people who know more than I do about these matters:
The importance of civilian prosecutors is not based on any presumption that civilians are purer, nobler and more committed to human rights than the military. The problem is an institutional one. Of necessity, armies are very hierarchical organizations. Leaving issues of human rights to military prosecutors is perceived in some countries as unhealthy because it can create situations where the prosecutor is trying to bring charges against people higher up in the command chain. This can be awkward, can lead to cover-ups, to abuses of power based on the “esprit de corps.” Of course civilian prosecutors and judges can be corrupt as well. But the idea is that the less institutional tangles you create that may contribute to such corruption, the better.
OK. I’ll stop here. I’m rereading some of the stuff written above and it has made me realize that in writing this paragraph I might have placed too high hopes on the role of rational argument in a debate.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:20 am
Is the US having problems allowing Mexico military tribunals? Worried about impunity for ranking personnel involved?
Do we not also have those for our “human rights” abusers that happen to be military personnel? Have we tried any ranking personnel?
There’s some hypocrisy there it seems. Particularly from a country which conducts secret military tribunals.
Sure, all militarizes should have oversight in place, and yes, taxpayer monies must be watched. My suggestion would be to pick some international persons to field complaints, review cases, and attend tribunals … if we are that worried that Mexico will be another Colombia.
Everything I have seen so far is out in the open. Federal and local police are being killed right and left by the Cartels. Reports have narcos actually being arrested. Different from Colombia is that the Cartels do not appear to be in league with the military and the military isn’t running around killing indigenous peoples; they are confronting the Cartels.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:39 am
LFM, there is a lot of horse manure in this comments section. Opinion passes for fact, and the worst, people don’t even realize it. Hence why I’ve really stopped commenting in the last months. I also wonder if the same thing happened to jcg, who I haven’t seen in a while (doesn’t mean jcg hasn’t commented).
Camilla, need I remind you of two things, though I doubt that they will have any effect on what you call your thought process: (1) The US already forced Mexico to change its constitution for NAFTA; (2) Chris Dodd is the man that during the Plan Colombia debates said Colombia needed more black-hawks because they are made in Connecticut.
At the same time I must say a great post that lays out all the aspects of US aid and its conditions.
Camilla, also might I ask you something: The arguments you make are very human rights based: the killing of civilians, for example. So how come you deny vehemently the violations by some (and thus the rights of their victims) while pointing out the violations by others, thus making them no longer human rights but politically convenient arguments? I mean, at least some attempt at objectivity would be nice. And just because a country votes doesn’t make it a democracy. That’s all about Mexico has it going for itself, in a complete sense (I know you’ll misinterpret this guaranteed).
Also, Dodd needs to respect other countries even if they aren’t like him. Does this mean he should respect countries like Iran or North Korea or Burma that regularly violate the human rights of their citizens? Or Russia? Or Sudan? Should he just let aid flow to all of these countries too? The answer is clearly no. So your argument is useless because applied universally, it’s ridiculous. What’s wrong with guaranteeing human rights? Not doing so would be a violation of international law, and undermine the rule of law in countries.
But like LFM said, maybe this is all a lost cause (and the past has shown it is) and the I too may “have placed too high hopes on the role of rational argument in a debate” as well…
June 9th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,364368,00.html
Thoughts?
June 9th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Camilla Says:
June 7th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I don’t understand why civilian prosecutors are so important.
this was your first phrase and as always happens when I read anything you post I have to stop because I am so taken aback with what you are defending
that’s because you’ve never lived in a country where your own government is killing its citizens with impunity… jesus… how naive (or disingenuous) yet you keep posting, twisting people’s perceptions of faraway issues…
I’m gonna have to become an active participant to check people like you lady
and every time I have to I’ll whip out your buddy’s (the Colombian government) bounced check
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/InsufficientFundsCloseUp.jpg
with the story around that corrupt episode
http://maritimasjustice.blogspot.com/
June 9th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
as pointed out by Senator Leahy, in his description of the Senate version of the bill: “Since when is it bad policy, or an infringement of anything, to insist that American taxpayer dollars not be given to corrupt, abusive police or military forces in a country whose justice system has serious flaws and rarely punishes official misconduct?â€
The only question I have about this is why ethical safeguards are even an issue.
Incredible.
viva Vermont…
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Look at Dodd getting some of his at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RItQbTvKcE
and “that fake group WOLA” ha!