Le blogueur “El 5anto” introuvable depuis six jours, nouvelle alerte postélectorale

Le blog El 5antuario a alerté, ce 14 septembre 2012, sur sa propre page de la disparition de son fondateur connu sous le nom de Ruy Salgado ou “El 5anto”.

“La possibilité d’une disparition volontaire le dispute pour l’instant à celle d’un enlèvement, voire pire. Le temps passe et la semaine écoulée alimente légitimement l’inquiétude. Dans l’hypothèse la plus optimiste, Ruy Salgado ne serait pas le seul à avoir choisi le silence temporaire, de plus en plus de journalistes mexicains se portant candidats à l’exil, de leur région ou du pays. L’affaiblissement d’El 5antuario constitue un nouveau revers pour la libre circulation de l’information, déjà malmenée dans le contexte postélectoral. Tous les moyens doivent être engagés pour localiser Ruy Salgado ou du moins lui permettre de reprendre ses activités en toute sécurité”, a déclaré Reporters sans frontières.

Ruy Salgado est introuvable depuis le 8 septembre dernier. Il devait assister, le lendemain, sur la place centrale du Zócalo à Mexico, au discours du candidat de gauche à la présidentielle Andrés Manuel López Obrador annonçant son départ du Parti de la Révolution démocratique (PRD) pour le Mouvement de régénération nationale (MORENA). Les soutiens et contributeurs d’El 5antuario tiendront Ruy Salgado pour “disparu” s’il ne réapparaît pas dans les quarante-huit prochaines heures. Le site fournira alors toutes les informations utiles à une enquête judiciaire.

Très engagé dans la couverture du processus électoral controversé du 1er juillet dernier, El 5antuario s’est fait une spécialité de dénoncer la corruption à l’œuvre au sein des institutions. Certains collaborateurs du site sont eux-mêmes témoins du phénomène, dans le cadre de l’emploi public qu’ils occupent. Par souci de sécurité, les collaborateurs d’El 5antuario sont anonymes : ils utilisent un faux nom, ne se connaissent pas personnellement, et apparaissent dans leur vidéo dissimulés sous un masque de “lucha libre” (catch). Ces précautions n’ont pas empêché Ruy Salgado et son blog de faire l’objet de graves menaces ces derniers mois, comme il l’a lui-même signalé :

Mécanisme bloqué

Le jour même de la disparition de Ruy Salgado, une vingtaine d’ONG engagées dans la défense de la liberté d’expression - parmi lesquelles Article 19 et AMARC (Association mondiale des radiodiffuseurs communautaires) -, ont dénoncé le processus d’élaboration du Mécanisme fédéral de protection des défenseurs des droits de l’homme et des journalistes. Ce mécanisme est imposé par la réforme constitutionnelle fédéralisant les atteintes à la liberté d’informer désormais promulguée.

Les ONG dénoncent un manque de transparence dans la sélection des organisations consultées et demandent à ce que le choix soit soumis à un examen public. D’après elles, le gouvernement n’a rien précisé des critères de recrutement ni des compétences d’organisations appelées à siéger au sein du Conseil consultatif dédié à ce nouveau mécanisme. La coordinatrice exécutive du Mécanisme, Omeheira Lopez Reyna, a refusé d’admettre une erreur de méthodologie mais s’est dite prête, devant Reporters sans frontières, à rouvrir les pourparlers sur la composition du Conseil. Notre organisation soutient l’exigence de transparence manifestée par d’autres.

Source: Reporters Without Borders

Mr. Zedillo - Helguera

ahelguera@jornada.com.mx

Source: La Jornada

U.S. Moves to Grant Former Mexican President Immunity in Suit

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

Published: September 8, 2012

MEXICO CITY — A former Mexican president who is now a scholar at Yale University should be immune from a civil lawsuit brought against him in the United States in connection with a 1997 massacre during his term, the State Department said Friday.

Lawyers for victims of the massacre, who brought the suit last September against the former president, Ernesto Zedillo, said Saturday that if a federal judge concurs, as they generally do, the decision “will prevent us from proceeding with the case against him and presenting proof of his responsibility.”

The State Department said Mr. Zedillo should have immunity because the suit, filed in federal court in Connecticut, concerned actions taken in his official capacity, which generally allow heads of state freedom from the hook of American courts. The filing noted that the Mexican government had asked that immunity be granted.

“The complaint is predicated on former President Zedillo’s actions as president, not private conduct,” Harold Hongju Koh, a State Department legal adviser and a professor at Yale Law School, wrote in a letter accompanying the filing. He said the complaint’s “generalized allegations” did not give the department any reason to rule differently.

The lawsuit, which alleges war crimes and crimes against humanity, has generated speculation in Mexico that it has more to do with settling political scores; Mr. Zedillo is abhorred by some members of his party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, for allowing reforms that contributed to its downfall in 2000.

US: Don’t Recommend Immunity for Mexico Ex-President Ernesto Zedillo

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

Allegations of Responsibility Should Be Evaluated by Courts

The US State Department should not issue a recommendation to grant the former president of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo, immunity in a civil suit, Human Rights Watch said. The State Department is expected to notify a US district court judge in Connecticut on or before September 7, 2012 of its recommendation regarding whether Zedillo, who served from 1994 to 2000, should be granted immunity in a lawsuit alleging his responsibility for a massacre carried out when he was president.

The plaintiffs in the civil suit, brought under the Alien Tort Statute, claim that Zedillo is responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, and other crimes in relation to the killing of 45 unarmed men, women and children in the community of Acteal, Chiapas, on December 22, 1997.

The merits of the plaintiffs’ claims should be evaluated by a judge, rather than pre-emptively thrown out because the defendant was formerly a ranking government official, Human Rights Watch said. Functional immunity of state officials should not be invoked to shield them from accountability for serious crimes committed in violation of international law (considered to be jus cogens norms), such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. In criminal cases the International Court of Justice has recognized immunity in narrow circumstances for high-level incumbents. .

Offering immunity in the circumstances of this case would be inappropriate and set an overly broad precedent contrary to the rights of victims and the evolution of international law. The US is party to several international treaties that impose an obligation to respect, protect, and fulfill the human rights protected in the treaties. Those treaties also guarantee victims of human rights violations a right of access to an effective legal remedy, and to grant immunity in this case would be an arbitrary interference with that right.   

Source: Human Rights Watch

Whooops!

Very late in the Elector Tribunal hearings, there were accusations by the Citizen’s Movement and AMLO camp that State of Mexico funds were transferred illegally to the Peña Nieto campaign (via third parties).  At the time, as Aguachile noted, the evidence was flimsy, and inflammatory accusations that Banco de México President Agustín Carstens was covering up the illegal transfers were seen as preposterous.

As my favorite villain (Auric Goldfinger) once said, “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence.  But thee times is enemy Although Carstens doesn’t seem to have any involvement in any of this, it does appear that Scotiabank did change documents on receipts from the State of Mexico, ostensibly to correct a  routing error.  HOWEVER…

Raúl Murrieta Cummings,  the State of Mexico’s Treasurer, now admits that the state made at least three funds transfers to individuals — supposedly resulting from “bank error.”  Presumably the transfer that got the Citizen’s Movement all hot and bothered was one.

Murrieta when asked about these transfer, said that one was to a “una señora” — which tells us nothing, and seemed to be meant that one shouldn’t look too deeply into the matter.  Coincidence?

Unverified photo of Marcos Gonzaléz Pak

That third admitted “misdirected payment”, has opened the way for “enemy action”… or at least unfriendly questioning of the state Treasurer by the leftist opposition parties.  And, if it doesn’t only call into question the State of Mexico’s financial operations, it , it raises some seriousl questions about the way Scotiabank operates.

On July 26 of this year, the State of Mexico transferred to the Scotiabank account of one Marcos González Pak 50,000,000 pesos (about 4 milllion U.S. dollars).   Marcos Gonzáles is the owner of a small manufacturing firm in Chihuahua which doesn’t seem to do any business, or provide anything to the government of the State of Mexico, and Mr. González refuses to divulge his political affiliations.

Source: The Mex Files

Mexico's Lopez Obrador leaves coalition to form new movement

Tens of thousands of Lopez Obrador's supporters attended a rally at Mexico City's Zocalo square

The defeated candidate in Mexico's presidential election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has announced he is leaving his left-wing coalition to form a new political youth movement.

Speaking to tens of thousands of his supporters in Mexico City, Mr Lopez Obrador said he would focus on changing Mexico through the new group, Morena.

He said he left on good terms, after losing two presidential elections.

He refused to accept the results of July's poll, saying it was fraudulent.

Analysts say his departure from the main coalition could weaken the left in Mexico.

"This isn't a rupture," Mr Lopez Obrador said at the rally in Zocalo Square.

"I have separated from the parties that form the Progressive Movement, but I must express my deep gratitude to all party leaders and supporters."

Morena, also known as the National Regeneration Movement, has yet to be formally registered as a party.

Civil resistance

Mr Lopez Obrador, who ran in the election for Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), also repeated his insistence that he would not recognise Enrique Pena Nieto as the legitimate president of Mexico.

He called for a campaign of "peaceful civil resistance", but stressed that protests should not turn violent, as this would only "perpetuate the regime".

After a recount of half of the vote, Mr Pena Nieto was declared the winner of July's election, with 38.2% of the vote to 31.6% of his main opponent.

Mr Lopez Obrador rejected the result, accusing Mr Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, of buying votes and favourable media coverage.

But on 31 August, Mexico's Electoral Court rejected his appeal, saying there was no evidence of irregularities in the campaign or the vote.

Addressing his supporters in the capital's main square, Mr Lopez Obrador accused the court's judges of "turning a blind eye" to the irregularities in the election, describing them as "characters without conviction".

Mr Pena Nieto is due to be sworn in on 1 December for a six-year term.

The BBC's Will Grant in Mexico says that the apparently mutual decision to split with the traditional left suggests Mr Lopez Obrador does not have wide support for continuing a long-term fight against the inevitable succession of Mr Pena Nieto to the presidency.

Six years ago, after losing the presidential election by a narrow margin, he led weeks of protests that caused disruption in central areas of the capital.

This time, he says he does not want to disrupt the lives of ordinary citizens.

"We are fighting for ideals," he said. "It is a matter of honour."

Source: BBC

ZÓCALO MAGAZINE DISTRIBUTION BLOCKED

A magazine wholesaler owned by media giant Televisa suspended August delivery of the monthlyZócalo magazine following critical coverage of Televisa’s key role in the July 1 presidential election.

Distribution company Intermex failed to supply copies of issue 150 to more than 160 branches of the Sanborn’s chain of stores, a major magazine retailer. The apparent circulation boycott affected sales of an edition whose cover story focused on the political power of Televisa, the magazine’s editors noted to Reporters Without Borders.

“Failure to distribute is a form of censorship,” the press freedom organization said. “Unfortunately, this is not the first recent case.” During the vote-counting period in July, the organization said, two editions of the weekly Proceso were not distributed to kiosks of the Soriana chain, which had reportedly played a role in alleged electoral fraud on behalf of the Revolutionary Institutional Party – the PRI – whose candidate was declared the winner. Enrique Peña Nieto is scheduled to take office on 1 December.

Reporters Without Borders demanded that the undistributed copies be returned to Zócalo, and that the magazine be compensated for lost sales.

Mexican Diplomat Traded Secrets with Private Intel Firm Stratfor, WikiLeaks Documents Reveal

By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
August 9, 2012

Exchange of Sensitive Information Focused on the US/Mexican Operations in the Drug War

US soldiers are operating inside Mexico as part of the drug war and the Mexican government provided critical intelligence to US agents in the now-discredited Fast and Furious gun-running operation, a Mexican diplomat claims in email correspondence with a Texas-based private intelligence firm.

The emails, obtained and made public by the nonprofit media organization WikiLeaks, also disclose details of a secret meeting between US and Mexican officials held in 2010 at Fort Bliss, a US Army installation located near El Paso, Texas. The meeting was part of an effort to create better communications between US undercover operatives in Mexico and the Mexican federal police, the Mexican diplomat reveals.

However, the diplomat expresses concern that the Fort Bliss meeting was infiltrated by the “cartels,” whom he contends have “penetrated both US and Mexican law enforcement.”

The Mexican diplomat is referred to as “MX1” in the some of the emails obtained by WikiLeaks but also identified by name in others.

The description of MX1 in the emails matches the publicly available information on Fernando de la Mora Salcedo, a Mexican foreign service officer who studied law at the University of New Mexico, served in the Mexican Consulate in El Paso, Texas, and is currently stationed in the Mexican Consulate in Phoenix.

US, Mexican Officials Brokering Deals with Drug “Cartels,” WikiLeaks Documents Show

By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

August 20, 2012

Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla after his arrest in Mexico City

Revelation Exposed in Email Correspondence Between Private Intelligence Firm and Mexican Diplomat

A high-ranking Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization member’s claim that US officials have struck a deal with the leadership of the Mexican “cartel” appears to be corroborated in large part by the statements of a Mexican diplomat in email correspondence made public recently by the nonprofit media group WikiLeaks.

The Mexican diplomat’s assessment of the US and Mexican strategy in the war on drugs, as revealed by the email trail, paints a picture of a “simulated war” in which the Mexican and US governments are willing to show favor to a dominant narco-trafficking organization in order to minimize the violence and business disruption in the major drug plazas, or markets.

A similar quid-pro-quo arrangement is precisely what indicted narco-trafficker Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, who is slated to stand trial in Chicago this fall, alleges was agreed to by the US government and the leaders of the Sinaloa “Cartel” — the dominate narco-trafficking organization in Mexico. The US government, however, denies that any such arrangement exists.

Mexican soldiers arrested Zambada Niebla in late March 2009 after he met with DEA agents in a posh Mexico City hotel, a meeting arranged by a US government informant who also is a close confident of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia (Zambada Niebla’s father) and Chapo Guzman — both top leaders of the Sinaloa drug organization. The US informant, Mexican attorney Humberto Loya Castro, by the US government’s own admission in court pleadings in the Zambada Niebla criminal case, served as an intermediary between the Sinaloa Cartel leadership and US government agencies seeking to obtain information on rival narco-trafficking organizations.

According to Zambada Niebla, he and the rest of the Sinaloa leadership, through the US informant Loya Castro, negotiated an immunity deal with the US government in which they were guaranteed protection from prosecution in exchange for providing US law enforcers and intelligence agencies with information that could be used to compromise rival Mexican cartels and their operations.

“The United States government considered the arrangements with the Sinaloa Cartel an acceptable price to pay, because the principal objective was the destruction and dismantling of rival cartels by using the assistance of the Sinaloa Cartel — without regard for the fact that tons of illicit drugs continued to be smuggled into Chicago and other parts of the United States and consumption continued virtually unabated,” Zambada Niebla’s attorneys argue in pleadings in his case.

Mexico’s Peña Nieto hires US propaganda firm

Posted by Bill Conroy - July 22, 2012 at 12:18 am

CLSA is same media-spin company used by Honduran coup regime

The de facto president-elect of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto has hired Washington, DC-based public relations firm Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates to help him spread positive propaganda during the transition period prior to his official swearing-in as the majordomo of Mexico on Dec. 1 of this year.

Pena Nieto’s choice of CLSA is interesting in light of current allegations of vote buying and money laundering that have been leveled against him and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI in its Spanish initials) by the opposition parties in Mexico. 

CLSA is the same US image-building firm that was retained in the fall of 2009 by the Honduran regime led by “de facto” President Roberto Micheletti in the wake of its coup d'état in that Central American nation.

CLSA’s Foreign Agents Registration Act filing with the Department of Justice described its mission in Honduras as promoting Honduran President and Usurper Roberto Micheletti’s dictatorship as a democracy “through the use of media outreach, policy maker contacts and events, and public dissemination of information to government staff of government officials, news media and non-government groups” all with the goal of advancing “the level of communication, awareness and attention about the political situation in Honduras.”

PRI runs amok in Neza… and ?

Antorcha blockade at Chicoloapan (Anima Politica: http://www.animalpolitico.com/2012/09/miembros-de-antorcha-campesina-bloquean-transporte-publico-en-edomex/

According to several different news  sources “rumors” that Movimiento Antorcha Campesina has been attacking businesses and homes in Nezahualcóyotl, just inside the State of Mexico are just that, and are being denied by the state authorities (who claim nothing is happening)-

However, media is starting to report on Antorchista blockades of metro stations (the Mexico City Metro extends into Neza) and on social media, people are saying masked Antorchistas cut telephone lines and were shooting at people.

At least the blockades are confirmed, and various reports on Antorcha websites report on confrontations between their own taxi-driver’s union and members of a PRD-connected bicycle-taxi union which has left at least two people dead.

Movimiento Antorcha Campesina is a PRI “popular sector”, and its militants have been known to resort to violence before.  Nezahualcóyotl has been a PRD stronghold within the State of Mexico, which makes it appear that a fight between two unions (basically over access to prime pick-up locations outside Metro stations) is in reprisal for the local voters’ continual support of the “wrong” party, with the violence said to be targeted at businesses owned by PRD supporters and individual PRD party members, whether connected to the bicycle-taxi union or not.

I know there were many in the “observer community” who expected some kind of trouble following the “problematic” Peña Nieto victory, but most were assuming the left would be blocking streets and annoying commuters and maybe… maybe… breaking a few windows here and there.  They tend to forget that PRI violence against the left in the wake of seriously contested elections has happened before.  Following Carlos Salinas’ “victory” over Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in 1988, there was a series of assassinations, unexplained auto accidents and and other violent deaths of PRD loyalists which, thankfully, did not escalate (as it easily could have) into … politics by other means (“power comes from the barrel of a gun”, as Mao Zedong put it).

While I have always said that Mexican politics is a blood-sport, and have no illusions that politicians here “play nice”,  I have to add that the major violence hasn’t been coming from the Left… who tend to still bring their  library books  (ok, and maybe their blackberries and cell phone cameras, too) to what could be a gun fight.

Damn well better hope the pen is mightier than the sword (or whatever the cyber variation of that might be).

Source: The Mex Files

The Great Egg Crisis hits Mexico

By William Booth, Published: September 3

Alexandre Meneghini/AP - A city worker sells eggs at government subsidized prices as people line up outside the truck in Mexico City, Aug. 24, 2012. The Mexican government is battling an egg shortage and hoarding that have caused prices to spike in a country.

MEXICO CITY — It is the Great Mexican Egg Crisis, and it will not be over easy, though there will be puns, especially in the Mexican press, which is cracking a lot of jokes.

But seriously: The public here is faced with an extreme shortage of eggs in a country that has the highest-per-capita egg consumption on the planet.

Highest being 22.4 kilograms (about 50 pounds) per person in 2011, or more than 400 eggs a year, depending on the size of the egg, according to Mexico’s National Poultry Industry.

There has been hoarding, price spikes and two-hour lines to buy eggs. Some retail outlets have been forced to limit how many cartons a day a customer can buy.

American hens have been called to the rescue.

An outbreak of AH7N3 avian flu virus is partly responsible. The deadly bird flu was detected in June on poultry farms in the Pacific coast state of Jalisco, and Mexican farmers and the government acted with lethal authority and slaughtered 11 million chickens to prevent its spread.