by the El Reportero’s wire services
WASHINGTON – Undocumented children detained near the US city of Houston were forced by the authorities to take a variety of psychotropic drugs, according to a lawsuit filed in April, which local media reported today.
According to the legal action filed by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, based in Los Angeles, California, and made public this Wednesday, the events occurred at the Shiloh Treatment Center in Texas, and would also affect minors separated from their parents.
The infants who are in that place, specialized in services for young people with behavioral and emotional problems, will almost certainly receive the drugs, regardless of their condition, and without the consent of their parents, the lawsuit claimed.
If a child is placed in Shiloh after being separated from one of the parents, then it is almost certain that he is taking psychotropic drugs, said Carlos Holguín, a lawyer for the organization that filed the legal appeal, cited Thursday by Newsweek magazine.
The document brought to the court alleges that the minors who refused to take the drugs were retained and received injections.
He also noted that some workers tricked them into believing that the drugs were vitamins.
‘The staff told me that some of the pills were vitamins because I need to gain weight. Vitamins changed about twice, and each time I felt different,’ said one child mentioned in the lawsuit.
The action alleges that the infants detained at the Shiloh Treatment Center, a government contractor housing immigrant children, were told they would not be released or see their parents unless they took medication.
Both adults and the infants themselves told the lawyers that drugs prevented them from walking, they were afraid of people and they wanted to sleep constantly, according to the affidavits filed on April 23 in the United States District Court in California.
Two more candidates for mayor assassinated in Michoacán
They were shot and killed by armed civilians in Aguililla and Ocampo
The violence against political candidates continued yesterday and today with the murder of two candidates for mayor in the state of Michoacán.
Omar Gómez Lucatero, who was running as an independent in Aguililla, was killed yesterday when armed civilians opened fire on him as he left his home in this Tierra Caliente municipality of about 16,000 people.
Gómez had run for office before with the Institutional Revolutionary Party but this time round he was running as an independent.
A security operation involving municipal and state police was implemented following the murder, but no arrests have been reported.
The second murder took place this morning in Ocampo when three armed men entered the home of Ángeles Juárez and shot and killed him.
Juárez was the Democratic Revolution Party candidate for mayor of Ocampo, a municipality of about 50,000 in the eastern part of the state.
The two murders come just a week after another Michoacán candidate was gunned down. Alejandro Chávez Zavala was killed last Thursday in Taretan.
He too was running for mayor.
There have now been 47 candidates assassinated during the election process that began last September.
Meanwhile, a 10-million-peso ransom (US $491,000) has been posted for information leading to the arrest of two brothers believed to have been behind the assassination of a candidate for federal deputy in Coahuila.
Governor Miguel Riquelme announced the ransom yesterday for information that would lead to locating and apprehending Erik and Ignacio Arámbula Viveros.
They have been identified as the authors of the assassination June 8 of Fernando Purón, the Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate for federal Congress.
Source: El País (sp)
Salvadoreans March Against Water Privatization
The Salvadoran people are staging a march today to the headquarters of the right-wing ARENA party in rejection of the maneuver to privatize the administration of the human right to water.
The organizations drawing together the Trade Union Front in El Salvador will march from the Cuscatlán Park to the ARENA general headquarters, in another protest against a measure that the oligarchic organization tries to mask.
