Drug War Chronicle, Issue #536 -(urls + editorial)- 5/16/08

A Publication of Stop the Drug War (DRCNet)
David Borden, Executive Director,
http://stopthedrugwar.org/user/borden
"Raising Awareness of the Consequences of Drug Prohibition"

New Offer: Clergy Against the War on Drugs Video
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/clergy_against_the_war_on_drugs_video

Students: Intern at DRCNet to help stop the drug war now!
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/drcnet_internships_to_stop_the_drug_war

Enough is Enough: Stop the Deadly SWAT Raids:
http://stopthedrugwar.org/raidpetition

Table of Contents:

1. FEATURE: BATTLING MILITARY IMPUNITY IN MEXICO'S DRUG WAR
As the US Congress begins to move toward passing a massive
anti-drug aid package aimed mainly at the Mexican military,
abuses by soldiers in the drug war there have prompted a serious
legal challenge.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/mexico_military_human_rights_case

2. FEATURE: VANCOUVER'S SAFE INJECTION SITE FIGHTS FOR ITS LIFE
-- AGAIN
Time is running out for Vancouver's InSite, the only
officially-sanctioned safe injection site in North America. The
Conservative government of Canadian Prime Minister Harper has
until June 30 to re-authorize the program, which it dislikes,
and InSite supporters are now engaged in a major campaign to
ensure its continued existence.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/vancouver_insite_safe_injection_site

3. LAW ENFORCEMENT: DEATH OF FLORIDA STUDENT FORCED TO BECOME A
SNITCH SPARKS PROTESTS IN TALLAHASSEE
The killing of a Florida State University student who became an
informer after being busted on drug charges has provoked angry
protests by her friends and fellow students.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/rachel_hoffman_informant_protest

4. OFFER: NEW CLERGY ANTI-DRUG-WAR VIDEO
Clergy are speaking out against the war on drugs! Donate $16 or
more (or whatever you can afford) and we'll send you a copy.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/clergy_against_the_war_on_drugs_video

5. STUDENTS: INTERN AT DRCNET AND HELP STOP THE DRUG WAR!
Apply for an internship at DRCNet for this fall (or spring), and
you could spend the semester fighting the good fight!
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/drcnet_internships_to_stop_the_drug_war

6. LAW ENFORCEMENT: THIS WEEK'S CORRUPT COPS STORIES
The evidence goes missing in Galveston, a pill-hungry cop goes
down in Oklahoma, a pill-peddling cop gets popped in New Jersey,
and another pill-peddling cop goes to prison in Indiana.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/police_drug_corruption

7. MEDICAL MARIJUANA: GOP ATTACKS OBAMA FOR SUGGESTING HE WOULD
END RAIDS
The Republican National Committee Wednesday attacked Sen. Barack
Obama for suggesting he would end DEA raids on medical marijuana
providers in states where it is legal. Given broad popular
support for medical marijuana, it is not at all clear that this
will be a winning issue for the GOP.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/gop_attacks_obama_over_medical_marijuana

8. PREGNANCY: SOUTH CAROLINA SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS WOMAN'S
MURDER CONVICTION FOR FETAL DEATH AFTER COCAINE USE
Regina McKnight was the first woman in South Carolina charged
with murder for having a stillborn child after using drugs while
pregnant. Now, after almost a decade behind bars, the state
Supreme Court has overturned her guilty verdict, saying she had
poor legal representation and was the victim of shoddy science.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/regina_mcknight_south_carolina_supreme_court_pregnancy_drugs

9. LATIN AMERICA: PROHIBITION-RELATED VIOLENCE SURGES IN MEXICO
More than 100 people, including several top federal police
commanders, have been killed in surging prohibition-related
violence in Mexico in recent days as the so-called drug cartels
strike back hard against police, soldiers, and each other.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/mexico_prohibition_related_violence_surges

10. CANADA: MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION RETAINS MAJORITY SUPPORT,
POLL FINDS
Canada's Conservative government wants to crack down on
marijuana, but it's out of step with the population. According
to a new poll, 53% want to legalize it.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/canada_marijuana_legalization_poll

11. EUROPE: DESPITE BRITISH MARIJUANA RECLASSIFICATION, NO JAIL
FOR LOW-LEVEL SELLERS
The new tough line on marijuana signaled last week by the
British government when it reclassified the herb may not be so
tough after all. The British Sentencing Guidelines Council says
small-scale sales and cultivation should be punished by
probation and fines in most cases.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/british_marijuana_sentencing_guidelines

12. SOUTHEAST ASIA: VIETNAM PONDERS DRUG DECRIMINALIZATION
The Vietnamese National Assembly is considering decriminalizing
drug possession. But with most drug users sent to detox camps
under administrative regulations instead of criminal charges, it
might not make much difference in the real world.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/vietnam_ponders_drug_decriminalization

13. DEATH PENALTY: MALAYSIA SENTENCES TWO TO HANG FOR MARIJUANA
TRAFFICKING, IRAN EXECUTES NINE DRUG SELLERS
Two Thai citizens have been sentenced to death in Malaysia over
75 pounds of marijuana, and nine convicted drug sellers go to
the gallows in Iran.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/death_penalty_iran_malaysia

14. WEEKLY: THIS WEEK IN HISTORY
Events and quotes of note from this week's drug policy events of
years past.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/drug_war_history

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================

1. Feature: Battling Military Impunity in Mexico's Drug War
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/536/mexico_military_human_rights_case

Lawmakers in the United States this week took the first steps
toward approving a $1.6 billion dollar, three-year anti-drug
assistance package for Mexico that is heavily weighted toward
aid for the Mexican military. The Mexican army needs all the
help it can get as, with 30,000 troops deployed against violent
drug traffickers by President Felipe Calderon, it wages war
against the so-called cartels, say supporters of the package.

But even as the aid package, known as Plan Merida after the
Mexican city where US and Mexican officials hammered out
details, was being crafted, the Mexican military was once again
demonstrating the risks of using soldiers for law enforcement.
On the evening of March 26, near the town of Santiago de los
Caballeros in the municipality of Badiriguato in the mountains
of the state of Sinaloa, a five-man military patrol opened fire
on a white Hummer driven by a local man back from the US. When
the smoke cleared, four people in the vehicle were dead, two
were wounded -- and there was no sign of any weapons.

It was the second time in less than a year that soldiers in
Badiriguato had opened fire, killing multiple innocent
civilians. Last June, three school teachers and two of their
young children were killed
(http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/490/mexico_drug_war_calderon_iraq)
when soldiers at a checkpoint perforated their vehicle with
bullets. That case went away after the military paid their
families $1,600 each.

Seeing yet another unjustified killing by the military was
enough for Mercedes Murillo, head of the independent human
rights organization the Frente Civico Sinaloense (Sinaloa Civic
Front). The veteran activist saw her brother assassinated in
September after discussing the June killings on his radio
program, but that didn't stop her from filing a lawsuit designed
to end what is in effect impunity for soldiers who commit human
rights offenses against civilians.

Under Mexican law -- the result of a post-revolutionary
political settlement designed to keep the military out of
politics -- members of the military do not face trial in the
civilian courts, but in special military courts. This fuero
military, or military privilege, results in soldiers charged
with human rights abuses being judged by members of their own
institution, and all too frequently, being absolved of any
wrongdoing no matter what the facts are.

Now, Murillo and her legal team, acting on behalf of the widow
of the Hummer driver, have filed suit in Sinaloa district court
in Mazatlan, challenging the fuero system. She doesn't expect
immediate success, she said.

"This is the first case presented in Mexico against the actions
the army has taken," said Murillo. "We know that when we present
this in Mazatlan, the judges will give us nothing. Then we must
take it to the Supreme Court of Mexico, and there might be
people there who will study what we are presenting."

But Murillo isn't counting on the Mexican courts; her vision
goes beyond that. "I don't think we can win here, but even if
the Supreme Court says the military can do what it wants, that
will lay the groundwork for going to the Inter-American Court.
Military impunity violates international treaties that Mexico
has signed," she argued.

The Organization of American States' Inter-American Court of
Human Rights and Inter-American Commission of Human Rights
(http://www.oas.org/oaspage/humanrights.htm) are autonomous
institutions charged by the hemispheric organization with
interpreting and applying the American Treaty on Human Rights
and ensuring governments' compliance with it. Mexico is a
signatory to that treaty.

"Using the military for drug enforcement in Mexico is a serious
problem," agreed Ana Paula Hernandez of the Tllachinollan Human
Rights Center of the Mountains (http://www.tlachinollan.org) in
the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. In addition to being one
of the most impoverished areas of the country, the mountains of
Guerrero have long been home to poppy and marijuana farmers, as
well as the occasional leftist guerrilla band over the decades.
The military has been deployed there for years.

But while most attention these days is focused on the military's
deployment to fight the cartels in major cities, Hernandez cited
the military's more traditional drug war role: manual illicit
crop eradication. "It's an almost impossible and useless task
since illicit crop cultivation is an issue of survival in the
mountain region, as in other parts of the country," she said.
"In these regions, farmers have two options -- either they grow
illicit crops or they migrate, so of course they will continue
to find ways to grow illicit crops. It will never end unless the
social and structural reasons for it are addressed."

But instead, successive Mexican governments have sent in the
military to root out the poppy and pot fields. At least, that is
their stated purpose, but Hernandez isn't sure they're serious.
"This is the excuse for deploying the military in many rural and
indigenous regions, but in many cases it's more about a
counterinsurgency strategy than a crop eradication strategy,"
she said.

The military presence in such regions is "an intimidating and
threatening" one, said Hernandez. "They set up camp wherever
they like, often destroying licit crops and harvests in the
process, stealing the water from the community, entering
people's homes to take their food, stopping people on the roads
to interrogate them, and so on. Worse yet, the military has
become one of the main perpetrators of human rights abuses in
the region, committing violations as serious as sexual rape for
example," Hernandez said. "This is something that is very common
but that is rarely denounced."

Tlachinollan has documented some 80 cases of human rights
violations carried out by members of the military in the region
in recent years, including the rape of two women, Valentina
Rosendo Cantu and Ines Fernï¿½ndez, by soldiers in 2002, said
Hernandez. But because of the military court system, nobody has
been punished.

"Justice has not been carried out in a single case," she said.
"It is very difficult, almost impossible, to obtain justice in
cases where the military is involved. They remain untouchable to
a certain degree and without a doubt, absolutely unaccountable
to society for their actions."

As for Cantu and Fernandez, they have given up on Mexican
justice and are now seeking redress before the Inter-American
Human Rights Commission. Their case is pending after a hearing
last October.

While Mexican citizens and activists struggle to rein in the
military, some US experts wonder whether involving soldiers in
drug law enforcement does any good anyway.
"We don't think it's a problem that can be solved militarily,"
said Joy Olson, executive director of the Washington Office on
Latin America (http://www.wola.org). "The use of the military in
the drug war is not a new thing -- they continually bring in the
military because the police are either too weak or too corrupt
to deal with the traffickers -- but the question is whether it
can deal with the challenge at hand, and we don't think so," she
said.

But even if the military is unable to stop drug production and
trafficking, it will continue to be the backstop for
hard-pressed Mexican politicians unless real reforms take place,
Olson said. "We need to be talking about significant police
reform. Until that happens, the military will be used over and
over again without solving the problem."

Murillo agreed that police reforms were necessary, and vowed
never to give up the fight for justice. "They killed my brother
because he criticized the army," she said, "but we are so used
to the soldiers now that we are not scared. I have nothing to
lose. My sons and daughters are married, my husband is 82. If
they kill me, I don't care. That's the only way to work. You
can't be afraid."

================

later
bliss -- C O C O A Powered... (at california dot com)

--
bobbie sellers - a retired nurse in San Francisco

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of cocoa that the thoughts acquire speed,
the thighs acquire girth, the girth become a warning.
It is by theobromine alone I set my mind in motion."
--from Someone else's Dune spoof ripped to my taste.

date: Fri, 16 May 2008 08:52:14 -0700 author: bobbie sellers