The international organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday that the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, “inherited a crisis” from her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024), due to the “extreme violence” of criminal groups and “abuses” of the State.

HRW in its annual report on Mexico, the association maintained that Sheinbaum, “who took office in October, inherited a human rights crisis created by the extreme violence of organized crime groups and widespread abuses committed by state agents with almost total impunity.”

“His predecessor, López Obrador, made little progress to face these challenges,” he said.

In addition, he warned that Congress approved constitutional reforms in September, the last month of López Obrador’s presidency, which expand the role of the military in public security and “radically” transform the Judiciary, which could “perpetuate abuses and seriously undermine the rule of law.”

The New York-based group said that the homicide rate “fell slightly for the third consecutive year” in 2023, to 24.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 25.9 the previous year, but six cities had rates above 100 in 2022.

Two out of three murders are committed by organized crime and, in the same proportion, firearms are used, of which 70% “arrive in Mexico through smuggling from the United States”.

Despite the “slight” reduction in homicides, “the number of reports of disappearances has increased,” said the association, which reported a total of more than 115,000 people missing in September, based on official figures.

“Many could have been killed and buried in the almost 5,700 clandestine graves that activists and authorities have discovered. Around 53,000 human remains were stored, waiting to be identified by the end of 2022,” the report noted.

HRW criticized López Obrador’s constitutional reform in September to remove the ban on soldiers from performing non-military functions in peacetime, give the Ministry of Defense control of the National Guard and empower the Executive to “deploy indefinitely” the Armed Forces.

In the last month of the previous government there were 232,761 soldiers, sailors and national guards deployed in the country, according to the report, which cited the death of almost 5,700 people in Army operations from 2007 to July 2024.

“The military has obstructed investigations and criminal proceedings into human rights violations committed in the past,” HRW said.

The document also cited the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which in 2023 pointed out that “it remains a widespread practice in Mexico and is too often the catalyst for mistreatment, torture, enforced disappearance and arbitrary executions.”

About 37% of those in prison that year were not convicted of any crime and more than 20% of those in pre-trial detention had been in this situation for more than two years.

HRW also documented almost 830,000 arrests of migrants between January and July 2024, “the highest figure ever recorded,” while in the north of the country the Mexican authorities arrest about 10,000 a month, including some with an appointment in the United States, and send them to the south by bus.

Although there was a record of more than 140,000 asylum seekers in 2023, “the highest figure in history,” the Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid (Comar) resolved less than 26,000 requests.

On the other hand, the association reiterated that “Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists and human rights defenders.”

Based on figures from the organization Article 19, there were 3,408 attacks or threats against journalists, 46 journalists killed and four missing from December 1, 2018 to March 31, 2024.

And in 2023, there were 14 murders of human rights defenders, according to the Cherry Committee, and 18 of environmental defenders, according to Global Witness.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed this Thursday night the kidnapping of a Spanish citizen in North Africa.

Official Foreign sources have reported that “different reliable sources confirm that a Spanish citizen is currently detained against his will in North Africa.”

“The Government is actively working to clarify all aspects and achieve its resolution,” sources from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have reported.

According to two sources close to the investigation, a Spanish citizen has been kidnapped in southern Algeria by members of a jihadist group.

Although early this Thursday the available information indicated that the victim could be a woman who spoke Spanish, finally the sources consulted have confirmed that he is a man.

Alarms went off late Wednesday afternoon when consistent and reliable information from Algeria assured that a Spanish tourist had been kidnapped by members of the Islamic State in the Great Sahara (EIGS).

According to these reports, the kidnappers released the people who met the Spanish woman on the border with Algeria before entering Mali territory and the latter was left hostage.

The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has called for “maximum caution” to guarantee the security of the Spaniard and that he can be released as soon as possible.

Marlaska has made these statements in an interview on RNE. “We are working on the ministries concerned and here caution has to be maximum to guarantee what concerns us, which is the safety of the Spanish citizen and that we have him with us as soon as possible,” he said.

At least five peace signatories were killed this Thursday in the midst of the fighting between the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and a dissident of the former FARC in the turbulent Colombian region of Catatumbo (northeast), the UN denounced.

“I express my strongest condemnation for the murder of 5 peace signatories and leaders in Catatumbo. It is urgent to protect the civilian population and communities. I call on armed groups to cease violent actions. The true will for dialogue involves respecting the lives of those who opted for peace,” said the special representative of the UN Secretary General in Colombia, Carlos Ruiz Massieu, in his X account.

The fighting, apparently due to territorial disputes, takes place in several rural areas of the department of Norte de Santander, including the hamlet of El Aserrío, which is part of the municipality of Teorama, and in Filo Gringo, located in Tibú, two of the municipalities that are part of the Catatumbo, according to different authorities.

Rodrigo Londoño, head of the Commons party, which emerged from the demobilization of the FARC in 2016, said that the five murdered are signatories of peace and demanded “guarantees” from Colombian President Gustavo Petro, in the face of what he called “an ongoing genocide.”

“Serious situation in the Catatumbo region. I demand that the armed groups stop the confrontation. History will not forgive the atrocities they commit against the civilian population and the signatories of peace. The Catatumbo and all of Colombia deserve to live in peace,” said Londoño, who was the last commander of the FARC.

According to the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (Indepaz), two of the fatalities were identified as Albeiro Díaz Franco and Yurgen Martínez, who were murdered in a rural area of Teorama, where they were carrying out their reincorporation process.

Another of the dead ex-combatants is Jhan Carlos Carvajalino, who “was forcibly removed from his place of residence by armed men” and then murdered in Convención, a municipality neighboring Teorama.

Faced with what happened, the Army indicated that “it is in the area, fulfilling its mission of providing security and preserving the life and integrity of the communities that live in the municipalities of the Catatumbo region.”

President Petro, for his part, refueled a statement from the Association of Mothers of Catatumbo for Peace, which denounces what happened today in the region and asked the Government to intervene, and commented: “They have bloodied the Catatumbo. We hear the voice of the mothers.”

El Catatumbo, a poor and jungle region that borders Venezuela, is formed by the municipalities of Ábrego, Convención, El Carmen, El Tarra, Hacarí, La Playa, San Calixto, Sardinata, Teorama and Tibú, in which the ELN, FARC dissidents, a stronghold of the People’s Liberation Army (EPL) and other gangs that dispute control of coca crops and drug trafficking corridors operate.

The Ombudsman’s Office expressed its “deep concern about the beginning of armed confrontations between the Central General Staff and the ELN in the Catatumbo region,” where “this armed conflict has generated a serious violation of human rights in the municipalities of this area of the country”.