Amnesty International has called on the Mexican authorities to protect an Indigenous community blockaded by more than 30 paramilitary gunmen with links to one of the country's main political parties. The 700 people living in San Juan Copala, in the Indigenous Triqui region of Oaxaca state, are virtually cut off from the outside world. They have restricted access to food and electricity and the armed group has also cut their water supply. Those trying to break the blockade have been...

Amnesty International has reiterated its call for the Mexican federal authorities to thoroughly investigate the attack on human rights observers in the southern state of Oaxaca, which left two people dead and several injured. Around 30 people in an International Caravan of Human Rights Observers were ambushed by armed men in the Indigenous Triqui area on Tuesday 27 April. Jyri Antero Jaakola an observer from Finland, and Indigenous human rights defender Alberta Cariño -also known...

Mexico's Supreme Court has overturned the kidnapping convictions and ordered the release of two Indian market vendors whose case received international attention. Otomi Indians Alberta Alcantara Juan and Teresa Gonzalez Cornelio have spent almost four years in prison on 21-year sentences for the alleged kidnapping of six federal agents. Prosecutors say the agents were confiscating pirated good at a market in 2006 when angry vendors overpowered them and held them against their will. The...

In 2002, in separate incidents, two indigenous women, Inés Fernández Ortega and Valentina Rosendo Cantú, were reportedly raped by soldiers. More than five years later, no one has been brought to justice. Both women have shown great courage in reporting their ordeals to the authorities: cultural, economic and social barriers deter many indigenous women in Mexico from seeking justice. Lorenzo Fernández Ortega, a leading member of the Me Phaa Indigenous People’s...

Washington, DC Political Coordination Committee Mexican Chamber of Deputies Deputy Francisco Rojas Gutiérrez Deputy Josefina Vásquez Mota Deputy Alejandro Encinas Rodríguez Deputy Juan José Guerra Abud Deputy Pedro Vásquez González Deputy Reyes Tamez Guerra Deputy Pedro Jiménez León To the members of the Political Coordination Committee: On behalf of Human Rights Watch, I am writing to urge you to approve the human rights...

Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies should swiftly approve the human rights reforms to the constitution passed by the Senate on April 8, 2010, Human Rights Watch said today in a to the Chamber’s Political Coordination Committee. The proposed changes to the constitution include measures to protect basic rights. In particular, the legislation passed by the Senate affirms the relevance of international law; clearly lays out the circumstances under which a state of emergency may be declared...

An explosive device was detonated in the garden and patio area of the U.S. General Consulate in Nuevo Laredo late Friday. Consul General Donald L. Heflin said nobody was injured. “We will take security measures for the personnel. Until we have that security level up, we will (not) open for the public,” Heflin said. According to a department news release, the device was thrown over the fence about 11 p.m. Friday. “It did go off,” said a consulate official who chose to...

Urgent Action To the people in solidarity around the world To the media To the organizations that defend human rights. To all the people and organizations that wish to act in solidarity with Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno we ask that they spread the following simple and deeply felt news. Juan Manuel was released from the Ixcotel prison on the 18th of February after spending 16 months unjustly accused of murdering the North American journalist, Bradley Roland Will on Oct. 27th 2006. For...

Juan Manuel Martí­nez Moreno, a grass-roots activist who had been wrongly held for the past year as a suspect in the 2006 murder of US cameraman Brad Will of the Indymedia agency in the southern city Oaxaca, was finally released yesterday for lack of evidence. Martí­nez participated in a series protests that the Popular Assembly of Oaxaca Peoples (APPO) staged against Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz in 2006. Will sympathised with the protests and was filming a major...

Amnesty International has reiterated its call to the Mexican authorities to urgently establish the fate of three people who were taken by army personnel in December and have not been seen since. Jose Angél Alvarado Herrera and his cousins Nitza Paola Alvarado Espinoza and Rocío Irene Alvarado Reyes were last seen on 29 December 2009, when a group of 10 soldiers took them from the town of Buenaventura, Chihuahua State, northern Mexico. The soldiers did not show any arrest...