by Diana Washington Valdez
The United States government has reached an important juncture on the issue of torture. Under Barack Obama, its new president, it must decide and declare whether torture to extract information from suspects in official custody is ever justified. Regular law enforcement officers are not permitted to torture suspects during questioning. A regular person who tortures another human being is subject to prosecution for violating laws against assault and injury. It is a documented fact that Mexican law enforcement officers applied torture in several of the investigations of people suspected of killing women in Juárez and Chihuahua City.
One of the victims of this practice was Cynthia Kiecker, a U.S. citizen who, along with her husband, Ulises Perzábal, was accused of killing a young woman in Chihuahua City. They were taken into custody and tortured into confessing to a crime they did not commit.
Eighteen months later, and after intervention by activists and U.S. authorities, they were exonerated and set free in 2004.
In fact, this week the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has scheduled a hearing for three of the unsolved murders from the Mexican state of Chihuahua. All three cases involve 2001 victims who lived in Juárez. The Mexican authorities had presented suspects in the deaths of Ivette González-Banda, Berenice Ramos and Esmeralda Herrera-Monreal, but the suspects claimed they were tortured into confessing to the crimes. One of the suspects died in custody.
The International Tribunal, which is part of the Organization of American States, is based in Costa Rica. The extraordinary session for the case is set to take place in Santiago, Chile. The United States is a member of the OAS, which exists to promote justice in the Americas. The Juárez “cotton field case” is the first gender violence case to come before the court, and only the court’s third case against the Mexican government. Some of the activists involved in seeking justice for the slain women have criticized U.S. authorities for looking the other way when it came to the murders and disappearances of girls and young women in Mexico. Perhaps the United States considered it politically unacceptable to discourage other countries from torturing people in police custody while the White House was justifying the practice for terrorist suspects in U.S. custody. Each year, the U.S. State Department issues a report on human rights conditions in countries around the world. In some of these reports, the U.S. government has condemned torture and extrajudicial executions by security forces in other countries. The torture issue that confronts Obama can derail the United States from its historic role as a champion for human rights. Our great nation should not turn off its lantern for the sake of expediency. At a fundamental level, whether or not to torture implies a moral decision; it is an issue of right or wrong, one which cannot be negotiated into something less than that.
To argue that the use of water-boarding and other similar techniques on human beings does not constitute torture is to join the ranks of those who minimize the murders of women from poor families in Mexico and other countries and who deny the Nazi Holocaust took place. Hispanic Link.
(Diana Washington Valdez is a journalist based in El Paso, Texas, and author of The Killing Fields: Harvest of Women. Her forthcoming book, Mexican Roulette: Last Cartel Standing, is set for release this year. Email her at dwvaldez@gmail.com). ©2009
