Mexico's Human Rights Chief Faces Charges He's Inept, Cares Little Tim Johnson - McClatchy
go to original October 22, 2014

Parents and loved ones of the the 43 teaching college students that went missing nearly one month ago gathered to pray at a special service held at Mexico's Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Clayton Conn reports from Mexico City. (teleSUR English)

As Mexico’s national human rights ombudsman, Raul Plascencia Villanueva oversees a sizable corps of investigators who look into the atrocities and massacres that commonly put the country in the headlines.

The job has made Plascencia a raft of enemies, but they are not the crooked cops and corrupt politicians behind some of the abuses currently roiling Mexico. His fiercest foes are human rights monitors, who say he is inept, unconcerned about crime victims and beholden to politicians.

They are battling Plascencia’s attempt to obtain another five-year term to lead the National Human Rights Commission, a semi-autonomous entity that receives its budget equivalent of $115 million entirely from the federal government.

Led by a former Roman Catholic priest, Alberto Athie, some 80 groups advocating for human rights, social justice and more effective government presented Congress with a demand last month that Plascencia be impeached from his post. They accused him of casting a blind eye on “innumerable human rights violations in Mexico.”

The movement against Plascencia began with the failure of the National Human Rights Commission to shed light on the late June killing of 22 civilians southwest of Mexico City that eventually was tied to Mexican soldiers – by the news media. It intensified after the disappearance late last month of 43 student teachers who’d been detained by police in Guerrero state. They remain missing.

“The damage to the country is enormous. Rule of law is at stake,” Athie said.

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