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Published Tuesday,
June 28, 2016, in Vol. 17, No. 126
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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, June 28, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 126
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Halt sought to pineapple expansion
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The head of Frente Amplio in the legislature is urging that a moratorium be established on the expansion of pineapple production in the region where agricultural chemicals have infiltrated the water supply. The lawmaker is Edgardo Araya Sibaja, and he was directing his comments to Pital de San Carlos where 3,500 persons have been drinking contaminated water. Araya was the one who brought the situation to the attention of the local courts. He said that the Acueducto de Veracruz de Pital has been closed due to the contamination with three chemicals used in the pineapple cultivation. It appears that the chemicals have infiltrated the ground water. The local producer, Agroindustrial La Lydia, S.A., has been involved in the controversy. Chemical runoff has long been a concern, but pollution of the ground water likely to be a long-time issue. Tourism staff strikes for half a day
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Employees at the tourism institute said that they conducted a work stoppage for a half day Monday to protest the possibility of changes in their salaries. They said their views had been overlooked by the minister, Mauricio Ventura. They would like a joint committee to study the matter and negotiations. The employees said that the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo brought in $45.5 million in 2015 and that $7 million of that went into a fund for a new convention center. Most of the money comes from a $15 tax on arriving tourists. Some 45 percent of the employees earn less than 1 million colons (about $1,850) a month, said the announcement. Our reader’s
opinion
Don’t automatically trust
the governmentDear A.M. Costa Rica: It is interesting that I read about the pesticide in the water in Pernambuco, Bahia and Paraiba, Brazil, when reporting a dramatic increase of microcephaly in babies in those areas. After the mainstream reports started to come in, many people I talked to didn't want to believe me when I told them about the possible pesticide connection. As most people do, they believe anything said by organizations like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and that is the final answer. I even had people call me a conspiracy theorist because I wasn't buying into what mainstream news was saying about the zika virus and microcephaly. I am glad, finally an independent well-respected medical organization, looked at where microcephaly was happening and it wasn't where the zika virus was occurring in several other Latin American countries. This is just another episode for people to wake up and realize that big government organizations like the Centers for Disease Control have jumped to false conclusions now and in the past. It sometimes makes me wonder if they have an agenda that will create new money making treatments or vaccines to help the big pharmaceutical industry or some way for the health industry to make more money from some of these assumptions they feed to the public. In May, Congress voted to fund $1.1 billion to fight the zika virus. Who was going to get that money? Money could be better spent on dealing with more dangerous diseases. The majority of the people infected with the zika virus, as many as 80 percent of them, don't know they were infected because in them the infection is asymptomatic. When the Centers for Disease Control speaks, people take it as gospel. As the article quoted the Centers, "In April the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies said that the medical consensus was that zika caused microcephaly." Don't always be willing to believe what we are told by these organizations that act like they are the final word in regards to health issues. Henry Kantrowitz
Punta Leona
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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San
José, Costa Rica, Tuesday,
June 28, 2016, Vol. 17, No.
126
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| Mid-year
vacation expected to ease the Central Valley traffic
situation |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
For those stuck in traffic jams each day there is a little hope. The mid-year vacation begins Friday evening and runs until July 17. This is a time when traffic lessens in the Central Valley because many workers take time off the same period their school children have theirs. Traffic has become a major concern, so much so that the Ministerio de Salud said Monday that it was authorizing all its employees who could do so to work from home. This is about the fourth announcement in as many years that public employees would be working from home. This is called teletrabajo, and the ministry has set up a commission to supervise it. Employees who have jobs that are teletrabajables will be able to work from home, said the ministry. The Policía de Tránsito said that its 744 officers will be placed in strategic locations for the mid-year holiday. That means Jacó, La Fortuna de San Carlos, Tamarindo, Playas del Coco, Sámara and Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, said the agency. There also will be mandatory checkpoints. They will be looking for speeders and drunk drivers, said an announcement. The Central Valley traffic jams have become a major political issue, and so far there are not major plans to solve the situation. The vacation will give traffic engineers time to sort out the problem. |
 Policía
de Tránsito photo
A typical traffic stop |
| Central
government is seeking solutions to the big problems of
the day |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The government is holding a contest in which it asks citizens to solve some of the overriding problems of the times. The announcement from Casa Presidencial said that the Mesa de Innovación Social, led by Vice President Ana Helena Chacón Echeverría, had identified four problems, and that there would be five solutions selected. The problems are the collection of trash, traffic accidents, |
access
to higher education and obesity. More information and a
timeline are here: www.retopaiscr.com. The government will pick 15 finalists from which the top five will be selected. The government is holding a seminar July 16 to help individuals generate ideas. The deadline for submission is July 24. Winners might have their ideas instituted, said the announcement. |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page |
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San
José, Costa Rica,
Tuesday, June
28, 2016, Vol. 17,
No. 126
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| Bamboo
undergoing tests to enter the construction mainstream in
U.S. |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Bamboo, one of the most sustainable natural materials, may finally be on track to be accepted as a building material in the developed world. Building codes everywhere require strict standardization of tests for all materials, such as timber or concrete. But tests for bamboo have not been standardized because it's not manufactured, but grown. So scientists at the University of Pittsburgh are testing several varieties of bamboo with mechanical properties that approach and even surpass those of softwood lumber. Their aim is to standardize the tests so that bamboo can be safely used in buildings. Types of bamboo that have excellent strength-to-weight ratio grow mostly in tropical regions where they have been used in building for thousands of years. Bamboo is used in construction in Costa Rica and also to make furniture. The strength of at least three species is comparable to steel. Uses range from scaffolding and support columns to walls and floors. Bamboo can even be forced to grow in certain structural shapes, such as arches. But construction companies in other regions use bamboo mostly in engineered form, as plywood and other laminated byproducts. Kent Harries, a professor who is leading the research, says the developed world should overcome the view that bamboo is a poor man’s construction material. |
 Voice of America photo
Kent Harries is conducting the bamboo strength
tests“If we standardize it, if we provide essentially documentation for test methods which the engineers can hang their hat on, we… I don't like the word legitimize, but we bring the material into the mainstream,” he said. Bamboo is remarkably strong and resilient, can grow up to 20 meters tall and can support heavy loads. Its harvest cycle is only about three years compared to softwood, which requires about 10 years, and hardwood, more than 30 years. Some bamboo is used in construction in Hawaii, a U.S. State, and tropical U.S. possessions. |
Here's reasonable
medical care
Costa Rica's world class medical specialists are at your command. Get the top care for much less than U.S. prices. It is really a great way to spend a vacation. See our list of recommended professionals HERE!amcr-prom
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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San José,
Costa Rica, Tuesday, June 28,
2016, Vol. 17, No. 126
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 Voice of
America photo
Pro-life demonstrators wave signs and make
their voices heard after the Supreme Court upheld abortion rights in a 5-3 decision in front of the Supreme Court building. Supreme court voids
law
restricting Texas abortions By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld abortion rights Monday, ruling that states across the country had no right to curb the constitutional right of women to end their pregnancies by imposing an undue burden on them to limit their access to abortion clinics. The 5-3 decision was perhaps the court's most important abortion rights ruling in a quarter century. The majority overturned a law in the southwestern state of Texas, similar to that enacted in other states, that required abortion doctors to have patient-admitting privileges at hospitals near their abortion clinics and that their clinics be equipped with costly hospital-grade healthcare equipment. Writing for the court majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said that the state's regulations were medically unnecessary and unconstitutionally limited a woman's right to an abortion. "The surgical-center requirement, like the admitting-privileges requirement, provides few, if any, health benefits for women, poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions, and constitutes an undue burden on their constitutional right to do so," said Breyer. The Supreme Court ruling, coming on the last day of the court's current term before its summer recess, could affect thousands of women in Texas alone, and many more throughout the U.S. Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented the clinics, said, "The Supreme Court sent a loud and clear message that politicians cannot use deceptive means to shut down abortion clinics." But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton denounced the ruling, saying, "It's exceedingly unfortunate that the court has taken the ability to protect women's health out of the hands of Texas citizens and their duly elected representatives." Abortion rights advocates say the ruling could particularly benefit poor and minority women in Texas, giving them access to abortion clinics in their rural communities or small towns where they live, rather than seeing the clinics close because their operators said it was too costly to meet the requirements of the state law. The abortion advocates said that the 2013 law had already forced the closure of about half of the state's 40 abortion clinics and that more were set to close if the law's constitutionality had been upheld, forcing women to travel hundreds of kilometers to the state's remaining clinics in big cities. The decision is likely to immediately reverberate through the country's 2016 presidential race. The presumptive Democratic nominee, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, supports a woman's right to end a pregnancy. Republican presidential contender Donald Trump says he is pro-life, opposed to abortion except in the cases of rape, incest or where the life of the mother is at stake. Years ago, he supported abortion rights. Mrs. Clinton called the decision "a victory for women in Texas and across America."She said a "safe abortion should be a right, not just on paper, but in reality." Trump had no immediate reaction. The decision was made by the Supreme Court's eight justices, with the court left with a vacancy when Justice Antonin Scalia died in February, shortly before lawyers for Texas and abortion rights groups made their arguments in the case. Scalia, a stalwart conservative on the court for nearly 30 years, was an ardent abortion foe. In Monday's ruling, the court's four liberal justices sided with abortion rights groups and were joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative justice who nonetheless over the years has mostly sided with abortion rights justices on the court. Kennedy had suggested at the March hearing on the dispute that lower courts might need to hear more evidence in the case. The court's three other conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, dissented from the ruling, voting to uphold the Texas law. If the court had deadlocked 4-4, the Texas law would have been upheld, although no national precedent would have been set. Writing in dissent, Alito, said the court majority had overstepped its authority in the way it considered the case, when it could have limited the scope of its ruling. "Federal courts have no authority to carpet-bomb state laws, knocking out provisions that are perfectly consistent with federal law, just because it would be too much bother to separate them from unconstitutional provisions," Alito wrote. Kennedy's vote was also the decisive one in a 1992 case upholding abortion rights. Abortion was first ruled constitutional in a landmark 1973 decision that to this day is a contentious issue in American politics and society at large. The 1992 ruling had a direct bearing on the Texas dispute since it set the standard that states could regulate abortion as long as they did not impose an undue burden on a woman's right to the medical procedure. The court decided that the Texas law imposed such a burden. With better birth control measures, the number of abortions in the U.S. has been falling in recent years, now down to below a million a year. But conservative states, where lawmakers are opposed to the medical procedure, have enacted more than 250 anti-abortion laws since 2010 aimed at cutting the number of pregnancies that are terminated. Some of these laws could be affected by Monday's Supreme Court ruling, while legal challenges to other state abortion restrictions could eventually reach the high court in the years ahead. Virginia governor’s conviction overturned for lack of action By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously overturned the corruption conviction of a former state governor, Bob McDonnell of Virginia, in a ruling that could make it harder to prosecute public officials for alleged wrongdoing. McDonnell, once the Republican chief executive of the mid-Atlantic state, was convicted in 2014 of accepting more than $165,000 in gifts, vacations and loans from a business executive in exchange for promoting his dietary supplement. But McDonnell contended he had not violated any bribery laws because he took no official actions on behalf of the businessman, only offering him access to state officials to promote his product, much like other political figures routinely do. Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said, "There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that. But our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns. It is, instead, with the broader legal implications of the government's boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute." Roberts said that if a lower court "determines that there is sufficient evidence for a jury to convict Governor McDonnell of committing or agreeing to commit an official act, his case may be set for a new trial. If the court instead determines that the evidence is insufficient, the charges against him must be dismissed. We express no view on that question." The court said that "setting up a meeting, calling another public official, or hosting an event does not, standing alone, qualify as an official act." Numerous U.S. political figures, both Republicans and Democrats, had urged the court to reach the decision it did, on grounds that McDonnell had not offered the business executive any official state action to benefit him. Analysts who followed the McDonnell case and other corruption cases against U.S. public officials said the ruling could make it harder in the future to prosecute such cases without a specific agreement from a public figure that he would do something for a citizen in exchange for a bribe. McDonnell was sentenced to two years in prison in the case, but was free pending the outcome of his appeal. His wife, Maureen, was also convicted in the case and sentenced to a year and one day in prison. In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, her lawyers immediately called for dismissal of the case against her. French open criminal probe in Mediterranean air crash By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
French prosecutors have opened a manslaughter probe into the May 19 crash of an EgyptAir jetliner that went down in the eastern Mediterranean killing all 66 people on board. Monday's probe announcement in Paris stressed that the inquiry was launched as an accident investigation and not as a terrorism probe. A spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office said authorities were not currently leaning toward the theory that the Paris-to-Cairo flight had been brought down deliberately. There was no distress call from the pilots and no one has claimed responsibility for causing the crash. In a related development, memory cards recovered by Egyptian investigators from the doomed plane's damaged flight recorders arrived Monday in Paris in hopes that French engineers can salvage critical data about the crash. French analysts attempting to retrieve chip data from the damaged black boxes of Flight MS804 are part of the same unit that succeeded in extracting critical flight recorder data from a Rio de Janeiro-to-Paris flight that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009. Those black boxes were submerged thousands of meters below the ocean surface for nearly two years before being recovered. Egyptian investigators have already determined the May 19 flight made a sharp left turn, followed by a 360-degree sweep to the right before plunging into the sea. French aviation experts say the plane sent automated messages indicating smoke in the cabin and trouble with a flight control unit shortly before disappearing from radar. California melee at capitol still under investigation By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Law enforcement authorities are continuing to investigate a white nationalist rally that turned violent Sunday in the western city of Sacramento, California, leaving at least 10 people injured, two of them critically. California Highway Patrol spokesman George Granada said a heightened investigation is underway, as police seek information from witnesses, video and the community at-large. A rally outside the California State Capitol by a group of about 30 members of a white nationalist group known as the Traditionalist Worker Party became violent when about 400 counter protesters arrived and fights broke out. Officials say people were treated for cuts, bruises and stab wounds. Videos published online showed dozens of people being punched, kicked and hit with sticks and wooden bats. The two critically injured people suffered stab wounds, according to the Sacramento Fire Department. The rally had been scheduled and the group received a permit to protest for two hours in front of the capitol. Police were aware of the counter protest and deployed more than 100 officers. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which follows hate groups, said the party was created last year as the political arm of the Traditionalist Youth Network, which aims to attract young people to white nationalism. A recent post on the network's Web site said members planned the rally in Sacramento to protest globalization and defend their right to free expression. "We concluded that it was time to use this rally to make a statement about the precarious situation our race is in," the network said. "With our folk on the brink of becoming a disarmed, disengaged and disenfranchised minority, the time to do something was yesterday!" Two cities are gearing up for political conventions By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Federal, state and city officials are finalizing plans to address potential unrest and extinguish any threats at the upcoming Republican and Democratic conventions, where the two parties will officially nominate their candidates for the U.S. presidency. Some 50,000 people, including about 6,000 protesters, are expected to converge on the midwestern city of Cleveland, Ohio, for the Republican National Convention from July 18 to 21, and nominate Donald Trump as the party’s presidential nominee. The Cleveland mayor’s office says the size and significance of the convention creates unique challenges for the city, prompting officials to implement special restrictions. A handful of physical altercations involving Democratic and Republican protesters has occurred at Trump’s rallies during the campaign season, and law enforcers are planning for the possibility of more at the Republican convention in Cleveland. As Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton verbally attack each other, resentment deepens among their followers and that could have consequences at the two conventions. “If individuals or groups decide to act unlawfully, plans have been put in place to efficiently address them. We understand the nature . . . and have anticipated the number of individuals we may encounter,” U.S. Secret Service spokeswoman Nicole Mainor said. For the past 18 months, the Secret Service has been collaborating with numerous local and federal law enforcement agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to prepare for the conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia. Preparations are based on an all hazards approach, Ross Bulla, president of the Charlotte, N.C.-based private security firm The Treadstone Group, said in an interview. The most likely disruptive events, said Bulla, would probably be physical acts of civil disobedience, anarchist style events such as blocking streets, disabling police vehicles and attempts to bait police into verbal or physical altercations. Like the law enforcement agencies, Bulla said some protesters devote a lot of time to train as well. As the agencies plan how to deploy their equipment so, too, do anarchists. They may stash caches of weapons ahead of time in trash receptacles, planters or newspaper racks, Bulla said. Law enforcers are also preparing for extraordinary crimes such as terror and cyber attacks, added Bulla, who is consulting with several private sector entities involved in security planning for the conventions. Of those crimes, cyber attacks are the most significant threat, said Bulla. Law enforcement officials are working with local infrastructure providers to thwart hackers’ attempts to cut off phones and lights and even disrupt water supplies. Despite recent high-profile terrorist attacks in Orlando, Florida and Brussels, Belgium, Bulla said the threat of terrorist attacks does not rank as high as threats of cyber attacks and civil disobedience. At the Republican convention, Bulla said there may be more opportunity for disruption and violence. Fervent protesters on the far left fringes are more likely to travel long distances to cities such as Cleveland and carry out anarchist type activity, he said, particularly if they accost Trump protesters who may be rather passionate themselves. Cleveland city officials plan to enforce strict rules to control demonstrators. The city will limit marches to 50 minutes, primarily during the morning hours before delegates convene. The planned parade route for demonstrators crosses a bridge in a direction away from Quicken Loans Arena, the convention site. Officials say an unspecified area around the arena will be cordoned off. Meantime, a federal judge on Thursday struck down city rules for protesters within the 5.6 kilometer event zone around the area, declaring them unconstitutional. The rules would have banned items such as large backpacks, adhesive tape and string. They would have also limited where demonstrators could speak within the zone. Cleveland officials say they will appeal the ruling. A week after the Republican convention, tens of thousands of people, including 30,000 delegates and 15,000 journalists, will gather in the northeastern city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to elect Hillary Clinton as their party’s presidential candidate. Officials in Philadelphia are taking a different approach than their counterparts in Cleveland. Philadelphia will allow supporters of long shot Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to rally throughout the day in a park across the street from the convention site at Wells Fargo Arena. The arena will be protected by a newly constructed perimeter more than 1.5 meters high. Thousands of Sanders supporters are expected to congregate in Philadelphia for the convention on July 25 to 28. Through demonstrations, they hope to convince the party establishment to reform the presidential nominating process by rejecting the growing influence of corporations in the electoral process.  IMAX Entertainment
photo via Voice of America
What space station crews see from the window.Earth is main actor
and star
in a new film from space By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Getting perspective on life: This is how filmmaker Toni Meyers described her feelings when looking at planet Earth from the International Space Station 400 kilometers away. There are no borders or nations as the blue planet rotates in silent dark space. But when one looks at the Earth through the IMAX lenses used by the ISS crew, it is clear that humans are having a profound impact on the planet's surface. The award-winning filmmaker demonstrated her gear at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Included was one of the first IMAX cameras, a big bulky, heavy machine that she used to shoot her 2010 documentary Hubble 3D IMAX, a film chronicling the effort of seven astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Now, as then, Ms. Meyers trained the astronauts to film in their spacesuits in zero gravity. She says that her film, “A Beautiful Planet,” was easier to shoot because the new digital IMAX cameras are much lighter, smaller and they don’t run out of film so quickly. Her goal was to show audiences Earth as if they were looking at it from the space station. She did not just do it for esthetic purposes. Ms. Meyers said she wanted to show people how they are affecting their home planet. “You do see that there is a lot of pollution in the air, over particular industrialized nations, which comes of course from the amount of fossil fuels we are burning. You also see the extent to which fossil fuels are being exploited, certainly in Texas and the Gulf states," she said. "You see that the rainforest continues to be cut down and burned, although there are programs to contain that spread, but you also see areas that have been reclaimed, like the Chesapeake Bay which was a mess in the 1970s and it is now completely turned around to a healthy environment. And so we want to show people that when you get together and put their heads together to solve a problem, it can be solved.” A celebrity in her own right, Ms. Meyers always collaborates with top actors to narrate her films. In Hubble 3D IMAX she picked Leonardo Di Caprio. Now, in “A Beautiful Planet,” Oscar-winning Jennifer Lawrence offers a compelling narration on the impact of deforestation on the environment, the melting of glaciers and the rise of sea levels which can threaten low-lying coastal cities such as New Orleans. As one would expect, the footage is breathtaking. While during the daytime, viewers can see human presence through the impact on nature, at nighttime, the planet glows from the lights of civilization. The intensity of light often indicates the concentration of humanity in one area or the affluence of one country over another. At nighttime, Earth’s atmosphere shimmers in iridescent colors, beautiful and fragile at the same time. “One thing I wanted to do in the film,” said the filmmaker, “was draw the analogy between the space station as a closed system, and the Earth as a closed system. Both of them have to have all the things we need to stay alive. Air, water, food, only on the space station you get resupply ships and the underlying message of the film is that Earth doesn’t get resupply ships. “ Ms. Meyers says, don’t dream of colonizing planets eons away. Clean house instead, take care of its natural beauty. She says, “The thin line of the atmosphere that’s just above the earth, that's all there is between us and the cold black harsh vacuum of space. And even though we’ve discovered other planets around other stars, they are much too far away for present technology to take us there. It’s all we have!” |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere
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| A.M. Costa Rica sixth news page |
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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, June 28, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 126
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Mexican rape and torture called
common By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Amnesty International says that a vast majority of incarcerated Mexican women face sexual torture during arrest and in the hours following. In a report released Tuesday, Amnesty detailed interviews and testimonies of 100 jailed Mexican women. Seventy-two of them said they were sexually abused during or soon after their arrest, and 33 reported being raped. "These women's stories paint an utterly shocking snapshot of the level of torture against women in México, even by local standards," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International. "Sexual violence used as a form of torture seems to have become a routine part of interrogations." The report found that most of the women in Mexican prisons were first-time offenders, low-income, and perhaps victim of an upswing in arrests related to the war on drugs. Many of them reported being forced to sign confessions immediately following hours of torture. "Women from marginalized backgrounds are the most vulnerable in Mexico's so-called war on drugs," Ms. Guevara-Rosas said. "They are usually seen as easy targets by authorities who are often more eager to show they are putting people behind bars than to ensure they are finding the real criminals." One of the women interviewed for the report is Maria Magdalena Saavedra. In 2013, she told Amnesty armed navy marines burst into her bedroom and beat her while yelling questions. She was suffocated until she passed out, and the marines continued to beat her and rape her with objects after loading her in a van. She was accused of controlling the finances of a major drug gang. At the police station, the marines threatened her daughter and applied electric shocks to her genitals and mouth. The torture lasted for 20 hours. But a navy doctor deemed her physically healthy, in a medical examination after her arrest. Three years later in 2016, Amnesty investigators found that her scars were still visible. The majority of the women surveyed reported the abuse to a judge or other authorities, but only 22 investigations were opened. Amnesty says no charges have yet been filed, and the army reports that no soldiers were suspended from service for sexual abuse between 2010 and 2015. Another woman interviewed said she was seven months pregnant and beaten until she miscarried in a prison over a hundred miles away from her home. A third woman, Monica, said she was gang-raped by six police officers before receiving electroshocks to her genitals and being suffocated during her arrest in 2013. The 24-year-old mother of four was forced to watch her husband being tortured, and he later died in her arms. Years later, all three women are still in prison, and their families say they have no idea why. In 2013 alone, over 12,000 cases of torture were filed in México, according to data from local and national ombudsman bodies, of which 3,218 were women. The Mexican Congress is currently reviewing a draft of a general law on torture, a measure Human Rights Watch says is long overdue. |
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