GOVERNMENT DEFENDS ITS RECORD
ON MURDER INVESTIGATIONS;
PARTIALLY ACCEPTS CNDH REPORT

by Jeff Barnet, FNS Editor

The Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua state governments, having succeeded in postponing their responses to the National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) report on violence against women until after the elections, finally spoke on the matter July 8, choosing to "partially accept" the recommendations.

National Action Party (PAN) leaders and state and police authorities were then strongly denounced by women legislators and non-governmental organizations (ONGs).

However, the timing of the response, three days after the defeat of the PAN's bid to secure a second gubernatorial term, diminished the attention the issue received in the Juárez newspapers. Stories about the CNDH report and the government's response to violence against women (violencia contra mujeres) were mostly relegated to the second section of El Diario and El Norte, and even then often posted on the bottom half of the section and in one-column sidebars. The last story on the issue appeared on July 22.

In the first formal response to the CNDH report entitled "The Case of Assassinated Women in Ciudad Juárez and The Lack of Collaboration of the Authorities of the Office of the Attorney General of the State of Chihuahua," state attorney general Arturo Chávez Chávez said that while the government was partially accepting the report, it would also not recognize "several unsubstantiated allegations which exist" in the CNDH document.

"Sadly, the Commission believes that there were people who abused this situation and tried to gain politically from it," said Chávez Chávez. "For that reason, we asked for the extension."

In addition, the CNDH report analyzes 24 of the 49 cases of women murdered in the city in 1996 and 1997 and contends there were "numerous irregularities in the investigations." The special CNDH panel said investigators misidentified corpses, lacked basic information on the increase of cases of murdered women, and failed to obtain expert tests when necessary.

However, Assistant Attorney General Jorge López Molinar, who oversees investigations in the North Zone which includes Ciudad Juárez, defended his department's work. "It is unfair to say that the state authorities have not been efficient," López said. "There are several cases that have been solved." López also praised the work of the Department of Public Ministry.

After rejecting these points, the PANista-led Ciudad Juárez municipal council voted to accept the recommendations of the CNDH report. One of the agreements agreed to by city and state leaders was the creation of a special phone line just for reporting leads on crimes against women. In addition, leaders agreed to be "in constant communication" with ONGs and organizations concerned with the violencia contra mujeres.

The municipal government of Juárez went a step further, creating a new commission to investigate administrative irregularities and omissions in public security measures. City councilors also questioned the office of the city police and its director, Jose Luis Reygadas Seyffert. Several political and ONG leaders have called for the dismissal of Reygadas.

City councilor Antonio Ruvalcaba noted that in order to be part of the police force, applicants must be trained at the police academy. However, Ruvalcaba noted, Reygadas did not go through the police academy, "and the results of his work have not been favorable."

Councilors from opposition parties used the July 9 session to criticize the PAN government. Ecological Green Party (PVEM) city councilor Jose Luis Rodriguez Chávez, for example, asked the Juárez community and the mothers of the dozens of murdered adolescent girls to forgive the council for not acting more efficiently. He went on to say that the PAN administration first headed by Ramón Galindo and now by Enrique Flores Almeida have "acted behind the backs of the people, with an insensitive and inhumane attitude."

In attendance at the session were leaders and members of ONGs and other organizations who carried signs protesting the high number of women murdered. According to El Norte, more than 140 women have been murdered over the past three years, many of them sexually assaulted, many of them teenage girls.

Protests against the city and state leaders continued throughout the month. In early July, city councilors Olvido Espelosín de Alvarez and Elsa Almeida de Díaz, who both were already expelled from the PAN for two years for criticizing Ramón Galindo, earned full, lifelong expulsion from the right-of-center party after staging a public protest in Chamizal Park near El Paso.

The two city councilors (regidoras) went on a hunger strike from July 1 to July 9 after publicly denouncing the state and municipal governments. A plaque honoring their hunger strike was placed atop a concrete column in Chamizal Park.

The two regidoras not only attacked the local and state PAN party organizations, but current PAN interim mayor of Juárez Enrique Flores Almeida and seven city councilors specifically who backed the postponement resolution.

Furthermore, CNDH investigators revealed on July 9 the PAN state government has misappropriated federal funds intended for public security. In 1994, the state received 5.2 million federal pesos to use toward public security: however, only 100,000 pesos were used for this purpose. In 1995, the state received a federal allocation of 1.5 million pesos for public security, and did not use any of the money for that purpose.

A group of federal legislators led by Alma Vucovich of the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) met with leaders from the CNDH and delivered a July 7 press conference in Juárez denouncing the state and local governments for being "guilty by omission." Vucovich, who is a member of the Federal Legislature's Commission on Gender Equity, said that the state, and in particular attorney general Chávez, were negligent in their investigatory responsibilities.

Furthermore, Vucovich said that state has not made any attempt to contact the appropriate ONGs and other organizations to inform them of advances in specific investigations. The state did not inform these organizations, and as of July 7 had still not given any information about investigations into the murders of adolescent girls María Inés Sagrario González and Brenda Méndez Vázquez, the two most recent victims of sexual assault and murder in Ciudad Juárez.

Senator Layda Sansores, a member of the PRD, also sharply criticized Mayor Flores and Governor Francisco Barrio, both of the PAN, for their "insensitivity and lack of interest" in the "cases of women disappeared and murdered on this border." Sansores said she "would like to ask Governor Barrio, his daughter, the leaders of business, and all the people who go to mass and have belief, that they see this as the work of all, and that we must go out and protest."

That same day, Judith Galarza Campos, representing the Independent Committee in Defense of Human Rights in Chihuahua and other integrated ONGs, placed the responsibility for dealing with the violence at the doorstep of federal Attorney General Jorge Madrazo Cúellar, who has not responded to repeated requests from protesters to conduct a federal investigation into the killings.

On July 18, families of disappeared and murdered women formed another civil organization, "Voces Sin Eco" (Voices Without An Echo), which will pressure authorities into stepping up their investigations. "The authorities wash their hands of it, they give up on the dead of our families, but they don't hand over the killers," said Voces member Guillermina González Flores, mother of María Sagrario.

Finally, on July 21, one of the leading members of the ONGs, Esther Chávez Cano, led a group of protesters to the Department of Sexual Crimes of the District Attorney's office. There she denounced authorities, saying "many guilty men get out of jail and are free to walk the streets because of the ineptitude and carelessness of this office."

District Attorney López Molinar and chief investigator Jorge Ramirez were both on vacation, according to government officials.

Sources: El Diario, El Norte de la Ciudad Juárez