Death Threats Against A Human Rights Defender: Vidulfo Rosales In Mexico

Death Threats Against A Human Rights Defender: Vidulfo Rosales In Mexico
Posted: 06/07/2012 5:05 pm
Kerry Kennedy.
President, Robert F. Kennedy
Center for Justice and Human Rights

"Shut up, or we will send you home in pieces," read the note that arrived at the Network of Civil Human Rights Organizations of Guerrero. It was addressed to Mexican public interest attorney Vidulfo Rosales and signed by vigilantes who proudly called themselves, "The Law."

Rosales heads up the legal team at the Tlachinollan Center, an organization honored with the 2010 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for litigating a series of precedent-setting cases against human rights abuses in the poorest region in the poorest state of Mexico. Every day, the team at Tlachinollan fights for justice on behalf of the indigenous communities whose remote mountain homeland is now in the crosshairs of a volatile narco-trafficking network and an increasingly ferocious and vindictive military -- a world in which starvation is rampant, where soldiers rape and torture the citizens they are stationed to protect and students are gunned down in broad daylight in the name of crowd control.

Now they find themselves defending one of their own: after a period of reflection, the organization has reluctantly decided that it will be best for Rosales to leave Mexico temporarily, fearing that the threats against his life are too loud to ignore, the protections offered by the government too minimal, and the perpetrators too powerful to dismiss.

Last month, with the help of the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights and a coalition of organizations that have called on Mexico's government to launch its formal investigation into these threats, Vidulfo Rosales arrived in Washington, D.C. to join a summer program in humanitarian law at American University. His temporary home is just one time zone removed from the community where he grew up; but in practical terms, it is a world away.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kerry-kennedy/vidulfo-rosales-death-threats_b_1579154.html?ref=politics&ir=Politics