Baja California Sees High Number Of Human Rights Complaints

A new report says Baja California law enforcement has racked up one of the highest numbers of human rights complaints in all of Mexico.

The report comes from Centro Prodh, a sort of Mexican Human Rights Watch. The group looked at at complaints of torture, arbitrary detentions and extortion by Mexican security forces such as police or military nationwide.

The report said 376 complaints of torture at the hands of security forces were filed with the government in Baja California since 2004. Torture includes beatings and other physical abuse. Baja California had the seventh-highest number of such complaints among all Mexican states, as well as the capital.

Victor Clark Alfaro, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights, said the situation is likely worse than the report suggests.

“We estimate that of every 10 people who are arrested, five will be tortured,” he said. Those are his estimates for Tijuana. He said people who are detained by Tijuana security forces allege being beaten during the arrest or while in local and state detention facilities, including jails.

He said his center has investigated cases of human rights violations against residents of Tijuana and the state of Baja California in general, as well as foreign visitors who have suffered abuses at the hands of police and other law enforcement officials.

He said the most common complaints he has encountered are of alleged beatings and arbitrary detentions by police. Many of the victims who come to his center for help are reluctant to file formal complaints with the government.

"Because they know that ultimately nothing will be done for them," he said.

Alfaro said that in the rare cases where complaints are filed, victims often give up before any punishments are made.

“The municipal and state justice system are structured to derail complaints,” he said. “The bureaucracy is so great that the victim ends up exhausted.”

Only 127 of the torture complaints filed in Baja California were investigated, according to the report.

Fear of retribution is also a factor. Residents of the Mexican state of Guerrero, one of the most violent states in the country, have long expressed fear and distrust of authorities and a reluctance to report crimes. Only 101 torture complaints were filed in Guerrero over the past decade. Some of the state's human rights complaints center around the disappearance of 43 college students nearly a year ago. Mexico’s top prosecutor said local police delivered the students to a drug cartel for execution.

The Centro Prodh report called for a stop to human rights violations, saying, “Only by putting an end to impunity for human rights violations can (Mexico) progress toward deeper institutional reforms necessary to transform the country.”