Bush’s Merida Initiative Headed for Defeat

Human Rights Concerns and Issue of Sovereignty Unite Across Borders

Contact:
NYC: Robert Jereski, 212-973-1782
Washington, DC: Harry Bubbins, 646 641 5788

Despite being rubber stamped by a pliant Congress, Bush’s “Merida
Initiative” seems headed for defeat. The foreign policy scheme snuck
into the Iraq Appropriations BIll to give hundreds of millions of
dollars in military aid to Mexico’s police and military forces
implicated in widespread human rights violations is subject to
withering criticism from both sides of the border.

Advocates first claimed victory for whittling the Bush proposal down
by over $200 million in the course of oversight hearings. “The
reduction in the gross amount of lethal aid is a big victory for grass-
roots advocates in Mexico and the USA. Some members of Congress do
understand the need to heed human rights concerns in our foreign
expenditures, and we must continue to press them on this.” said Harry
Bubbins of Friends of Brad Will (FoBW). The network of activists also
noted the inclusion of specific language requiring regular updates
from the U.S. State Department as to the progress of the investigation
into the murder of the U.S. reporter.

Advocates and government representatives in Mexico rightly denounced
the Merida Initiative as a misguided effort to undermine Mexico’s
sovereignty. A greater reliance on American military technology and
mercenaries from Blackwater would lead to a client-state relationship
and greater suppression of populist efforts to resist the neo-liberal
economic privatization of public resources, such as the PEMEX national
oil company coveted by multi-national interests.

“This has never been about the failed drug war, or anti-terrorism,”
stated Pabby Gonzalez of Friends of Brad Will, “This has been about
arming the Mexican government further against the popular discontent
with the Calderon regime and suppressing the activist and indigenous
movements in Chiapas, Oxaca and even Mexico City.” Mr. Gonzalez
went on to state that, “The human rights certification process
inserted by Congress, though inadequate, is one very small step
towards the realization that we should not be contributing to a
corrupt security apparatus, and need to demand progress immediately on
outstanding cases.”

“We never believed that “human rights safeguards” were adequate.” said
Harry Bubbins, of Friends of Brad Will “Given the outstanding crimes
by Mexico, including the murder of U.S. reporter Brad Will, we need to
see actual progress on these cases.” added Mr. Bubbins.

The House and Senate are currently working to reconcile the
differences in the versions they each passed,m and advocates are
pressing to stop it entirely.

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Meanwhile, The International Forensic Program (IFP) of Physicians for
Human Rights (PHR) recommends a thorough and wider inquiry following
its comprehensive forensic review of the ongoing investigation by
Mexico’s Attorney General (Procuraduria General de la Republica-PGR)
into the October, 2006 death of 36-year-old American Brad Will.

“The perpetrators of Brad Will’s homicide can best be held accountable
if his death is investigated within the context of a larger pattern of
violence,” says Schmitt, Director of the International Forensic
Program at PHR.

Friends of Brad Will is a nationwide network of activists, friends and
family members of Brad Will, the U.S. journalist who was murdered by
Mexican government paramilitaries in broad daylight in Oaxaca, Mexico
in October 2006. Despite numerous eye witnesses and photographic/video
evidence, no one has been held accountable. Friends of Brad Will has
been educating, organizing, and pressuring the U.S. government to work
on behalf of Brad Will and to reject the Merida Initiative. http://friendsofbradwill.org

More on the Merida Initiative here: http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5118
For more information, please visit: http://www.amnestyusa.org/mexico

LASC Position on the Merida Initiative

As Congress enters the final stages to approve the Merida Initiative,
an aid package to Mexico and Central America that seeks to further
militarize the region under the guise of the U.S.’s “war on drugs/war
on terror,” we find manifold reasons to stand in opposition:

1) Money for Central America through the Merida Initiative would mark
a significant increase in funding for military/police equipment and
training in the region at a time when the need is for anti-poverty and
crime-prevention programs.

The Merida Initiative, also known as Plan Mexico, builds on the
troubling model of Plan Colombia, which has poured billions of dollars
into a failed military approach to combating drugs while doing little
to address rural poverty and urban unemployment. Central America has
already become a satellite for U.S. military and police training in
Latin America, despite the poor human rights records of some
governments in the region. With the opening of the International Law
Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in 2005, El Salvador?already the second
largest recipient of military training in the region?became the hub of
police training. The ILEA has the capacity to train 1500 students per
year, more than the current Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
and Cooperation, also known as the SOA. U.S. officials refuse to
acknowledge the corruption, misconduct and human rights violations
committed by the Salvadoran police. To the contrary, the Merida
Initiative now proposes to further support ILEA and further equip
those police. Meanwhile, the Initiative wholly ignores the root
problems that continue to compel regional involvement in drug
trafficking?poverty and unemployment.

2) The Merida Initiative would further threaten human rights by
supporting repression of the rights to free speech and protest. The
money from the U.S. would be an open invitation for the Mexican and
Central American governments to continue using “iron fist” and anti-
terrorism laws to crack down on legitimate social movements.

Over the last decade, Mexican police and military personnel have
repeatedly committed human rights violations in attempt to silence
civil dissent. Taking the most recent example, in 2006 security forces
responded to civil society protest in Oaxaca with hundreds of
arbitrary detentions, acts of torture, and over 20 assassinations.

Numerous Mexican and international human rights organizations have
expressed concern that Merida Initiative aid for Mexico’s military and
police constitutes a recipe for unchecked human rights violations.

Meanwhile, an “anti-terrorism” law passed by the Salvadoran
legislature in 2006 uses language that, like the Iron Fist laws
implemented in other Latin American countries, is very vague, leaving
them open to a wide variety of repressive applications. The Salvadoran
government has already used these laws to further criminalize protest
tactics commonly used by social movements. The US Ambassador to El
Salvador has expressed explicit support for police crackdowns,
condoning the use of police force in protecting US trade interests.

Through funding the ILEA ? in addition to other police training
programs in Central America and the Caribbean ? the Merida Initiative
would legitimize and justify such crackdowns . Vague human rights
provisions in the bill would not change this reality.

Finally, there is evidence that the countries receiving aid from the
Merida Initiative are already working to militarize their police
forces. The separation between police and military in El Salvador and
Guatemala, the top two Central American recipients of Merida
Initiative aid, has declined dramatically in the years since Peace
Accords led to the demilitarization of police in those countries.

There has also been a resurgence of death squad-style murders, some
linked to the police, in both Guatemala and El Salvador.

3) The Initiative would not effectively combat drug-trafficking.
Military interdiction efforts have a “balloon” effect. In Colombia,
U.S. military efforts to stop coca production and trafficking in key
locations have simply shifted production and trafficking to new
locations, causing the number of coca-producing states to jump from 8
to 24 over the course of Plan Colombia. The Merida Initiative would
likely have a parallel effect on drug trafficking, simply diverting
trafficking routes from one place to another and forcing cartels to
become more sophisticated.

Military interdiction efforts fail because they ignore a root cause of
the problem: U.S. demand. Widespread drug use in the U.S. makes drug
trafficking a lucrative business. Colombia has taught us that so long
as demand remains high, even a multi-billion dollar military solution
will fail. Even the right-wing RAND Corporation has concluded that far-
flung attempts to stop drugs at their source is 23 times less cost
effective than domestic drug treatment at home. While Merida proposes
another step down the failed supply-side path, no parallel funds are
being destined to state-side drug demand reduction programs.

4) Programs like the Merida Initiative have a worrisome lack of
oversight and transparency.

Congress has not been given sufficient information about how the
Central American and Mexican police will utilize the funding included
for the region in the Merida Initiative. The examples of the ILEA and
the SOA are instructive, in that officials at these institutions have
actually blocked availability to basic information. Human rights
groups that have sought to monitor the SOA and the ILEA have been
denied documentation, such as course descriptions and names of
students and instructors. Though backers of these military and police
training programs promise conditions will be placed on the funds,
given the history of poor oversight of such programs there is no
guarantee this will occur.

In addition, the process in Congress for assessing the Merida
Initiative was rushed and unclear, preventing opposition voices from
making themselves heard. By including the Merida Initiative in the
Emergency Supplemental bill to fund the occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan, promoters of the initiative short-circuited the normal
process of going first through authorization and then through
appropriations, preventing all sides and viewpoints to be heard and
considered.

5) US military and police training contributes to violence rather than
diminishing it.

Ample evidence gathered by SOA Watch and other human rights groups
demonstrates that US training increases the level of official and
extrajudicial violence in Latin America. There is no reason to believe
that any of the structural problems have been addressed when it comes
to police training. Reports from Mexico indicate that over 200
soldiers and police trained and equipped by the US have used the
skills they learned to join and prop up various drug cartels. The
proliferation of repression tactics only perpetuates the cycles of
violence. The governments of Latin America do not need more police and
military equipment and training from the country whose training has
only raised the level of violence in the hemisphere.

The Latin America Solidarity Coalition demands:

No funding for the Merida Initiative.

Close the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security and Cooperation (SOA).

Close the International Law Enforcement Academy for Latin America.