Mexico to hand army control of National Guard, sparking outcry

Mexico’s Senate has handed laws that will switch management of the nation’s Nationwide Guard over to the army, a contentious transfer that rights teams and opposition lawmakers say offers an excessive amount of energy to the armed forces and will result in abuses.

The Senate’s 71-51 vote in favour of the invoice on Friday comes after the decrease home of Congress already authorised the measure. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is anticipated to signal it into regulation.

When the Nationwide Guard was created below a constitutional reform in 2019, it was positioned below civilian management – however most of its coaching and recruitment has been achieved from inside the nation’s army.

Lopez Obrador, generally known as AMLO, has waved apart issues over the elevated militarisation of public safety, saying the guard should now be below army command to forestall corruption.

However opposition events have mentioned they plan to file courtroom appeals difficult the brand new laws, which they argue violates the Constitutional assure on civilian management.

“Public security will not be achieved by violating the rule of regulation, by violating the Structure,” mentioned Senator Claudia Anaya Mota of the Institutional Revolutionary Get together.

The Mexican army has been criticised for a report of abuses and rights teams have warned that eradicating civilian management over the Nationwide Guard might result in comparable violations.

“Now we have already seen the disastrous outcomes of the militarization of public safety forces in Mexico over the past 16 years,” Edith Olivares Ferreto, government director of Amnesty Worldwide Mexico, mentioned in an announcement on Friday, criticising the Senate’s determination.

“We name on the manager department to design a plan for the progressive withdrawal of the armed forces from the streets, prioritizing the strengthening of civilian police forces and the event of public prevention insurance policies geared toward guaranteeing public security.”

Nada Al-Nashif, the UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights, additionally mentioned that “the reforms successfully depart Mexico with out a civilian police pressure on the federal degree, and additional consolidate the already outstanding function of the armed forces in safety in Mexico”.

“The safety forces ought to be subordinated below civilian authorities,” Al-Nashif mentioned in an announcement.

However Lopez Obrador on Friday lashed out at critics, together with the United Nations.

“When did the United Nations take a stand?” he mentioned throughout a daily information convention, questioning what the physique had achieved to forestall struggle from breaking out between Russia and Ukraine.

“These organisations that supposedly defend human rights, most of these organisations are made up of individuals on the best from completely different international locations of the world … as a result of they earn some huge cash for simulating, for pretending, for being go-betweens for authoritarian governments,” he mentioned.

Mexico has seen report ranges of violence in recent times, and members of the opposition and activists have accused the Nationwide Guard of assorted instances of abuse.

The ranks of the Nationwide Guard, made up of greater than 110,000 members, are largely stuffed with members of the military and marines. These officers retained their place within the army and had been thought of on mortgage to the guard.

Earlier than coming to energy in 2018, Lopez Obrador had pledged to ship the army again to the barracks. However he has tasked them with all kinds of assignments, together with combating drug cartels, serving to with varied infrastructure initiatives, reminiscent of a brand new airport within the capital, and constructing financial institution branches in rural areas.

Late final month, a Reality Fee investigating the 2014 disappearance of 43 college students mentioned that six of the scholars had been handed over to a military commander who ordered that they be killed. The surprising revelation immediately tied the army to one in all Mexico’s worst human rights scandals.