Mexican court to allow genocide charges against former president

[Judi Lynn]

Mexican court to allow genocide charges against former president
By WILL WEISSERT
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY - In a historic ruling, Mexico's Supreme Court said Wednesday that a special prosecutor could present genocide charges against former President Luis Echeverria over a 1971 massacre of student protesters.

By a 3-2 vote, the court ruled that for technical reasons, a 30-year statute of limitations had not expired.

The issue now returns to a lower court, which will decide whether allegations brought by special prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo meet the legal definition of genocide so that trial could begin and an arrest warrant might be issued.

Carrillo was appealing a judge's decision last year to reject his request for the arrest of the 83-year-old former president.
The special prosecutor says the former president ordered government thugs to attack protesters during a student demonstration on June 10, 1971, according to case files released to a Mexican freedom of information group.
(snip/...)

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2005/06/15/build/world/50-mexico-pres.inc

[lenidog]

1. Genocide!? I could see murder but not genocide

Was he planning to wipe out every student in Mexico?

[Judi Lynn]

2. Earlier article for background,for anyone unfamiliar with this information

New Genocide Charges Planned in Mexico
Despite Setback in Case Against Echeverria, Prosecutor Targeting 30 Ex-Officials

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 2, 2004; Page A17

MEXICO CITY, Sept. 1 -- The special prosecutor investigating government human rights abuses during the period known in Mexico as the "dirty war" said he planned to charge 30 former civilian and military leaders with genocide, despite legal setbacks in his unprecedented effort to bring the same charge against former president Luis Echeverria.

Prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, speaking in an interview Tuesday, defended his attempt to hold former political leaders accountable for deaths and disappearances during a campaign of repression against students and other activists from the 1960s to the 1980s.

The special prosecutor has faced criticism since July, when he asked a judge to issue an arrest warrant for Echeverria, 82, who was president from 1970 to 1976. He also sought warrants against 11 other former top officials, accusing them of genocide in connection with a 1971 massacre in which about 30 student protesters in Mexico City were killed by security forces.

Carrillo Prieto did not say when he would bring genocide charges against the 30 other former officials, but he said his office had evidence linking them to about 200 deaths and disappearances.
(snip)

Carrillo Prieto said his reading of international law defines genocide as the systematic attempt to eliminate any ethnic, religious or national group. Prosecutors examining human rights crimes in Yugoslavia and Argentina have concluded that such groups could also include political dissidents, Carrillo Prieto said. He has accused Echeverria of using the state's military and police powers to try to systematically "exterminate" Mexican political dissidents, which Echeverria has denied.
(snip)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54234-2004Sep1.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Echeverria trying to pass the buck:

Former Mexican president sheds light on 1968 massacre

The 1968 Tlatelolco massacre
Says students weren't responsible for bloodshed
February 4, 1998

Web posted at: 8:16 p.m. EST (0116 GMT)
MEXICO CITY (CNN) -- Former Mexican President Luis Echeverria has broken three decades of near silence on the 1968 Tlatelolco Square massacre, casting doubt on the official version of the shooting that claimed the lives of as many as 300 student demonstrators.

In a wide-ranging interview with congressional investigators and reporters Tuesday at his Mexico City mansion, Echeverria denied that he ordered government troops to fire on demonstrators. But he also discounted the official government explanation -- that the deadly gunfire came from other student radicals.

"These kids were not provocateurs," he said. "The majority were the sons and daughters of workers, farmers and unemployed people."

Echeverria, who as interior secretary at the time of the massacre was in charge of police and internal security, is pointing the finger at his boss back in 1968 -- then President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz.
(snip/...)

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9802/04/mexico.massacre/

[Adelante]

3. This makes no sense at all

It was a massacre, yes, but it is not genocide.

[fob]

4. Genocide - The systematic, planned annihilation of a racial, political or

cultural group.

Sounds like it applies to me.

edit: left out "planned"

[mom cat]

5. This makes sence to me too...Genocide against political activists!

I would to see this definition upheld. When you also look at the planned extermination of political activists in Central America, the need for such a broad interpretation becomes quite clear. Who knows, maybe it could even apply some day to the US and the mysterious airplane crashes involving liberal politicians.

[fob]

6. Also note that there is no qualification as to QUANTITY of those

killed.

[Xithras]

7. "Annihilation" pretty much defines the quantity.

It's genocide to kill 15 political activists if they're the only activists that exist for that party.

It's genocide to kill 15 political activists if their killing is part of a greater plan to kill of the rest of their party.

It's NOT genocide to kill off 1500 political activists if they're part of a larger group and you have no plans on killing off the rest of the group.

Genocide is a concept that's defined by intent.

[fob]

9. Close, genocide is still genocide even if you only get 1 of a group

of 5000. You are correct it's the intent. It's not how well you "succeed" at the annihilation, only that you PLANNED on doing it. The end number of the defined group is irrelevant.

[mom cat]

11. Great point!

[Xithras]

8. That's a bad definition.

The legal definition of genocide:

Genocide is defined as "acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group".

This is the definition created by the Geneva convention, and the only one recognized by the Hague and World Court. Yours may have come out of a dictionary, but it isn't recognized legally anywhere that I'm aware of. Political groups are not a protected class.

[fob]

10. Even if you use your definition which says "in whole or IN PART"

yet you argue above that anything less than whole annihilation is NOT genocide. :shrug:

And while my defintion is a dictionary definition, yours refers to a "national group", are political parties not National Groups? I think that qualifies.

Here is the originator of the term weighing in;

Rafael Lemkin and his work with the Geneva Conventions led the term "genocide" to be incorporated into the Geneva Conventions.

Here is Lemkin's definition:
"Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity but as members of a national group."

Cited in "Beyond the 1948 Convention -- Emerging principles of Genocide in Customary International Law," Maryland Journal of International Law and Trade, vol. 17, no. 2, Fall 1993, ppp. 193-226.

So in the end I think my dictionary definiton is on solid ground.

[Adelante]

12. You would have to first have a "national group"

Before its "political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence" would be protected under the genocide conventions.

If all the protesters who were killed had been Huichols, for example, you would have a "national group" -- but students or political protesters of themselves, this would be a very new interpretation of "national group."

Have you seen this anywhere else before?

[Xithras]

14. I NEVER argued that...and national group doesn't mean organizations

Genocide is about intent, not action. I never said that you had to destroy an entire group to commit genocide, just that you have to intend to kill them all. It has to be a systematic murder carried out as a part of a wider eradication plan. Whether or not the eradication plan is completed is ultimately irrelevant. Technically, if you killed ONE person from another race AND it could be proven that you wanted to kill EVERYONE of that race AND that you had the pracical means to carry that extermination out, then you've committed genocide...the fact that you only killed one person doesn't matter.

And your definition of "national group" is flawed. The term "national group" was intended to represent something more akin to Bavarians in Germany, or Californians in the United States. If the US government decided to eradicate everyone in Florida, as an example, they'd be attempting to eradicate a national group. In a more practical example, the Soviet mass murders in Ukraine are a demonstration of the genocide against a national group. If the US invaded Canada and decided to kill everyone they found, that would also qualify as the killing of a national group.

A "national group" is a population of people who are connected simply by tradition or geographic location, but not necessarily by race, religion, or the other protected classes.

[Adelante]

15. What is Genocide?

What is Genocide?



The crime of genocide is defined in international law in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.



"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.


-snip-

The law protects four groups - national, ethnical, racial or religious groups.

A national group means a set of individuals whose identity is defined by a common country of nationality or national origin.

An ethnical group is a set of individuals whose identity is defined by common cultural traditions, language or heritage.

A racial group means a set of individuals whose identity is defined by physical characteristics.

A religious group is a set of individuals whose identity is defined by common religious creeds, beliefs, doctrines, practices, or rituals.

http://www.genocidewatch.org/whatisgenocide.htm

© 2002 Genocide Watch

[Xithras]

17. Thank you for supporting my point.

"National" doesn't include organizations, it basically means "point of geographic origin".

So, technically, shooting all of our Republican's WOULDN'T qualify as genocide :)

[Adelante]

18. Well, we shared the same point

You're welcome :hi:

[fob]

23. Locking yourself into the GC definition is the problem

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,126876,00.html

Carrillo said "dozens" of students were killed when a civilian-clothed government force called the "Halcones," or Falcons, attacked student demonstrators in Mexico City (search) on June 10, 1971.

He said that fell under the definition of genocide in a 1967 Mexican law because the victims were "a national group of political dissidents" who were "partially destroyed through the illegal use of physical force."


So using the complete definition of the GC convention and Mexican law, genocide IS an appropriate charge.

BTW, in my checking around about this incident (Corpus Christi Massacre) there were 25 students killed of about 10,000 demonstrating.

[fob]

22. That's the Geneva Convention definition but what about Mexican Law?

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/aug2004/mexi-a21.shtml

-snip-

Less than 48 hours later, on July 24, a Mexico City judge ruled the arrest warrants invalid, citing a 30-year statute of limitations under Mexican law. Carrillo promised to appeal the ruling quashing the warrants to the Mexican Supreme Court on the grounds that the statute of limitations does not apply to the crime of genocide, which, under Mexican law, includes mass killings of students. The prosecutor pointed out that international conventions on genocide require that such crimes be investigated and the culprits punished.

[Adelante]

13. Not political

As far as I've ever read.

[fob]

21. Again from the person who coined the term genocide, there IS a political

component. By your and Xithras determination one could systematically plan to annihilate Democrats and that would not be genocide? Clearly the Democratic Party is a National Group and just because there would be no unified racial aspect or religious aspect or cultural aspect does not mean they are NOT a National Group. Even xithras attempt to rename national group as national organizations to more easily rebut it doesn't cut it. Though it is much easier to define groups based on their nationality, religion, race or culture, that doesn't mean there are not other types of national groups. In fact I would argue there has been a great deal of genocide committed against political groups, it's just been easier to define the group in terms of race or religion.

So we all agree it's the intent that is the issue and it seems like the President clearly had the intent to take that group of students out, our only issue is if the students are a "group" that would garner the president a genocide charge. I say that they are a national group based on their political affiliation and that is covered under genocide.


Here is Lemkin's definition:
"Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity but as members of a national group."

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

24. Political group?

That's not any definition I've heard of before. Cultural and religious groups, yes - and races, of course. It doesn't seem to be in the UN's definition either.

[fob]

26. Read above, it's part of Mexican Law.

[Adelante]

16. The Mexican Government is guilty of genocide

But not in this case.

Tens of thousands of Indians since the 1940s, at least, that's genocide.

There is something called politicide, which the Mexico City massacre may fit under, but I'm not sure what the human rights convention is in cases of politicide. But I am very familiar with genocide and this ain't it.

[Adelante]

19. Here's a definition of "politicide"

Politicide is a form of mass, targeted killings in which a group of people are destroyed because of their political or ideological beliefs. It is similar to genocide, but different in that politicide does not specifically target ethnic, racial or cultural groups.

The phrase is sometimes used to describe the campaigns of killing committed by Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, in which many individuals were killed because of their anti-communist or "bourgeois" political views. Large groups of anarchists and libertarian socialists were also systematically killed by Stalin.

http://encyclopedian.com/po/Politicide.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. Ok this woudl be a first

in mexican history...

[struggle4progress]

25. It will be good to see him brought up on charges. It was a terrible crime.