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Expert To Speak At NMSU On Mexican Human Rights Crisis

The co-founder of the International Tribunal of Conscience, which last month issued an initial verdict regarding the human rights crisis in Mexico, will speak at New Mexico State University next week along with NMSU visiting professor Camilo Pérez-Bustillo.

Julio Moreira of the Federal University of Latin American Integration, or UNILA, in Brazil, will talk about the verdict at 3 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 27, at Nason House, 1070 University Ave., the home of NMSU’s Center for Latin American and Border Studies.

Last month, the tribunal, which is made up of an international, interdisciplinary jury of scholars and human rights experts, issued an initial verdict regarding alleged crimes against humanity committed by the Mexican government and its allies in the U.S. and elsewhere. The crimes were the focus of hearings in New York City on Sept. 26. The hearings were dedicated in commemoration of the first anniversary of the disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, Mexico.

Members of the jury included former California Supreme Court Justice and University of California, Davis Law School Professor Cruz Reynoso; former UN Special Rapporteur for Migrant Rights Jorge Bustamante; Wilma Riveron Collazo of Puerto Rico; Aaron Ceradoy of the Philippines; National Lawyers Guild President Azadeh Shahshahani; Jeanne Mirer of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers; Laura Carlsen of the Americas Project of the Center for International Policy; former dean of Macquarie Law School in Australia Gill Boehringer; Margo Tamez of the University of British Columbia in Canada; NMSU professors Neil Harvey, Cynthia Bejarano and Iñigo García Bryce; and NMSU Professor Emeritus Christine Eber.

Pérez-Bustillo said the focus of the hearings in New York City was on Mexico’s deepening human rights crisis, including the role of the U.S., which has provided $3 billion in military, police and other aid directly related to the ongoing drug-related violence in Mexico since 2007 through the Mérida Initiative and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“The current human rights crisis in Mexico is unprecedented in the country’s history in terms of scale, depth, and extent. There are over 160,000 dead and 27,000 disappeared since 2007, not including a still unknown number of disappeared migrants,” said Pérez-Bustillo. “Mexico is the single worst violator of human rights in Western Hemisphere and one of the most egregious in the world.”

A key aspect of the tribunal is to explore the relationship between the impact of U.S policy in Mexico and the impact of related U.S policies, such as free trade, the drug war and other forms of intervention, throughout Latin America, including Central America, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Colombia.

For more information about the tribunal, visit http://internationaltribunalofconscience.org/.

Information from NMSU