By Lilia Lopez
In a recent interview with BBC News, President Fox denounced a leaked draft version of a report on the government’s involvement in the nation’s “dirty war” against so-called “left-wing rebels” in the 1960s and 70s.
As reported by the BBC, the authors of the report state, “The authoritarian attitude with which the Mexican state wished to control social dissent created a spiral of violence which…let it to commit crimes against humanity, including genocide.”
The report goes on to accuse the government of rounding up groups of men and boys allegedly affiliated with the leftist leader Lucio Cabanas. Those detained were at times, forced to drink gasoline and subjected to beatings and torture by electric shock. Many of the bodies of victims were then dumped in the Pacific Ocean after being flown in helicopters from military bases in Acapulco and other locations.
A government office created by President Fox in 2002 produced the report. It has the specific charge of investigating any possible human rights violations carried out under previous Mexican presidential administrations. Commenting on the leaked version of the report, Mexican special prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo Prieto said it was biased and places excessive blame on the military without taking into account abuses committed by the rebels as well. He noted that the President would soon receive a revised version of the report that would be authorized for publication.
Carrillo has also tried to bring charges against former president Echeverria in relation to the massacre of over 100 student protesters in 1968 The former president has repeatedly denied any wrong doing.
The leaked report is currently available on the website of the US research institute, the National Security Archive. The director of the organization’s Mexico Project department, Kate Doyle, said “This is a state of affairs reminiscent of Mexico’s past when citizens were routinely shut out of civic participation by a government determined to keep them in the dark.”
Sources: BBC World News
