Last week, Casa del Migrante Saltillo, a migrant’s shelter, in Saltillo, Coahuila announced their recent report, issued to the Inter-American Commission on Human Right’s Rapporteurship on the Rights of Migrants, Rapporteurship on the Rights of Women, and Rapporteurship on the Rights of Children, highlighting the disproportionate increase in violence against Central American migrants. This has made Coahuila currently one of the most violent states for migrants and migrants’ rights defenders in Mexico. Since March 2013 alone, the Casa del Migrante Saltillo documented 30 cases in which migrants’ human rights have been violated by Preventive Municipal Police in Saltillo, Coahuila. The types of human rights violations documented in the report include asphyxiation, electric shocks, rape, and psychological violence. They note that the chain of complicity for these and other forms of torture extends to all three levels of government in Coahuila and Mexico, and impedes victims’ access to justice. The Casa del Migrante concludes that due to the extreme risk for migrants and migrant rights defenders in Saltillo, the group has requested precautionary measures from Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, the Coahuila Human Rights Commission, and the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights.
To read the press release in Spanish, click here.
