This is pretty hilarioso when you consider how Mexico treats its citizens at home and how rampant crime and corruption are.

The News Staff - 11/8/2002

Lawmakers on Thursday presented a formal complaint to the United Nations against the United States for systematically violating the rights of Mexican migrants.

At a meeting with the local representative of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Thierry del Prado, senators accused the United States of arbitrarily detaining migrants, government news agency Notimex reported.

"We know there were arbitrary detentions because (suspects) were denied the right to have access to legal counsel," said Sen. Sadot Sanchez, president of the Senate Human Rights Committee.

He said many of the 53 Mexicans currently on death row in the United States had been deprived of their right to consular access.

Sanchez added U.S. authorities are justifying human rights violations of migrants with its policy of tightening border security in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"We cannot accept, under the pretext of combating terrorism, human rights should be violated and the lives of Mexicans put in danger," Sanchez said. "We cannot allow migration to be associated with delinquency."

Tensions between the two nations over migrant rights increased last August when Mexican citizen Javier Suarez Medina was executed in Texas after spending years on death row.

President Vicente Fox argued Suarez Medina was not allowed to contact the local consulate for legal assistance, which is a violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The United States maintains Suarez Medina originally claimed he was born in Texas.

Fox subsequently canceled a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush at his Texas ranch to protest the execution.

-- Anonymous, November 08, 2002

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Friday, Oct. 11, 2002

Giuliani Takes 'Zero Tolerance' Policy South of the Border

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is taking the hard-nosed "Zero Tolerance" police policies that cleaned up crime-ridden New York to Mexico City, which has an exploding crime rate similar to that of pre-Giuliani New York.

Giuliani's consulting firm the Giuliani Group, created after he left office, has been hired by a group of concerned Mexican citizens to bring his crime-fighting techniques to Mexico City, now suffering from an epidemic of serious crime.

"The similarities between what Mexico City faces today and what New York City faced in the late '80s and early '90s are striking," Giuliani told a press conference Thursday. He was accompanied by former NYC Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, one of two police commissioners who put the Zero Tolerance policy into effect.

The policy was put into effect by William Bratton, who was police commissioner between 1994 and 1996, when the murder rate was cut in half and serious felonies fell by 33 percent. Bratton has recently been named chief of the troubled Los Angeles Police Department.

Giuliani told reporters Thursday that he would recommend the same methods that drastically reduced New York City's crime rates, including what was called the "broken windows" method of punishing minor crimes such as breaking windows as a way to discourage lawlessness at its most basic levels, pinpointing potential lawbreakers before they could move on to more serious offenses. The policy also included such tactics as the use of crime statistics and mapping to locate problem areas.

Mexico City officials told the New York Times that street crime in general and kidnappings for ransom in particular are out of control, adding that police officers are often also the offenders. Some 150 of the city's 30,000 police officers have been jailed on corruption charges during a crackdown over the past seven months, police officials in Mexico City told the Times.

Mexico City's police chief, Marcelo Ebrard, told the Times that he welcomed Giuliani's advice.

"We expect a serious diagnosis of the police situation and crime trends in Mexico City," Mr. Ebrard said. "We will work together with Mr. Giuliani's team to follow the recommendations that will help reduce crime."

Critics were skeptical about how successful the Giuliani-Bratton-Keric policy will be in a city mired in political corruption.

"The problem we have in Mexico City goes far beyond any agreement between López Obrador and Giuliani," Homero Aridjis, a poet, novelist and social commentator in Mexico City, told the Times.

"It is precisely the corruption among judges, among prosecutors and the police. It is a grave internal problem that allows criminals to walk free and could undermine the entire project." Giuliani and his associates said they will spend a year setting up the Compstat crime-tracking system and teaching Mexico City police their techniques.

-- Anonymous, November 08, 2002

This is definitely worth a chuckle. Mexico can stick that complaint you know where. We are at war, and they are lucky we haven't moved into Mexico 'officially' to clean house there. I'm sure Mexico and Canada are being used to gain access to the US. Aren't you?

As for the second article, I dunno about teaching those 'criminals in power' how NY did it. seems to me that is something that shouldn't be shared, like the code keys to our missiles sort of thing.

After all, the crime in Mexico is so bad and that is how those in power got to their positions, right? they would be better off if they just surrendered to the US. 'course then we'd be in a mess having Mexico as a territory. i suppose we could refuse, tho.

-- Anonymous, November 08, 2002

Soon as I read it I thought Clinton has a hand in this somewhere. But then I'm ready to believe the worst about him (or her) any time.

-- Anonymous, November 08, 2002