Journalist and human rights activist Lydia Cacho Ribeiro has now spent one month in “forced displacement” outside Mexico after attacks on her home in July.
On July 21, thieves broke into Cacho’s home, poisoned her dogs and stole electronic equipment containing her journalistic work.
Press freedom and human rights organization Article 19 denounced Cacho’s exile and the state of human rights and impunity in Mexico in a press release.
“It is unacceptable that in Mexico the survivors of torture and grave violations of human rights cannot count on a minimum guarantee [of safety]. Meanwhile, the perpetrators and their accomplices are guaranteed to be able to continue their criminal actions,” said the organization.
Courts are still processing injunction proceedings for Adolfo Karam, Mario Marín, and Kamel Nacif, the three men allegedly involved in Cacho’s 2005 kidnapping and torture. All three remain fugitives.
“It seems as though the interests that protect the politico-business mafia that makes up the international networks of pedophilia and human trafficking of minors are much bigger than any attempts to legitimize oneself before the law,” said Article 19.
Cacho is the author of The Demons of Eden (2005), which implicated businessmen Jean Succar Kuri, of Quintanaa Roo, and Kamel Nacif, the “denim king” of Puebla, in an international pedophilia ring.
Last year, the United Nations (UN) human rights council rebuked Mexico over the treatment of Cacho and ordered the country to compensate her within 180 days. The UN also condemned the attacks on Cacho’s home in July.
Cacho herself made a statement in exile.
“To be outside of my country is equivalent to a sentence or sanction for doing my job and searching for justice. I find myself in a situation of forced displacement with the subsequent violation of my human rights of integrity, liberty and security because of the incapacity of the Mexican state to protect me as a survivor of torture and to guarantee me justice,” the journalist said.
Article 19 asked the government to guarantee Cacho’s safety and demanded “that the Mexican state execute the orders of the federal Attorney General’s office with all due diligence, as there is no justification for delaying the arrests.”
Source: Sin Embargo (sp)
