President López Obrador on Tuesday rejected a United States government report that denounced “significant human rights issues” in Mexico.
Published by the U.S. Department of State on Monday, the report said those issues included “credible reports” of a wide range of abuses, among which were:
- Unlawful or arbitrary killings by police, military and other governmental officials
- Forced disappearance by government agents
- Harsh and life-threatening prison conditions
- Arbitrary arrest or detention
- Restrictions on free expression and media, including violence against journalists
- Serious acts of government corruption
- Insufficient investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence, including domestic or intimate partner violence
The State Department also said that “impunity and extremely low rates of prosecution remained a problem for all crimes, including human rights abuses and corruption.”
Asked about the report at his regular press conference, López Obrador accused the United States government of lying.
“[The report] isn’t true; they’re lying, with all respect, it’s nothing but politicking,” said the president, who frequently asserts that his administration doesn’t tolerate the kind of human rights abuses that routinely occurred during previous governments.
“It’s their nature,” Lopez Obrador said of the U.S. government, “they don’t want to abandon the Monroe Doctrine and … the so-called Manifest Destiny [belief]. They don’t want to change; they think they’re the government of the world.
“It’s not worth getting angry about,” the president said. “That’s just the way they are.”
He also suggested that Mexico could write a damning report about the human rights record of the U.S. government, questioning why it imprisoned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange — who is in fact in jail in the United Kingdom as he fights extradition to the U.S. — and why criminal organizations that distribute fentanyl are “allowed” to operate in the U.S.
“What are you doing for young people so that they don’t use fentanyl?” López Obrador asked before going on to claim that the hush-money investigation against former U.S. president Donald Trump is politically motivated.
AMLO, as the president is best known, has vigorously defended Mexico in the face of criticism emanating from north of the border, declaring that the country is both safer and more democratic than the United States.
The latter assertion came after the federal government’s commitment to combating Mexico’s notorious drug cartels was being questioned by some Republican Party lawmakers in the wake of the murder of two United States citizens in Matamoros, Tamaulipas.
The claim that Mexico is more democratic than the United States followed the Feb. 27 publication of a State Department statement that indirectly criticized the government’s recently-approved electoral reform laws.
Mexico News Daily
