08/11/10 – A week after the Center for Investigation and National Security (Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional) reported that the war against organized crime has left more than 28 thousand dead, the Federal Institute for Access to Information and Data Protection (Instituto Federal de Acceso a la Información y Protección de Datos –IFAI) ordered that the federal Secretariat of Public Security (Secretaría de Seguridad Pública –SSP) reveal the statistics on intentional homicides that occurred between June 2008 and May 2010.
This comes after a resolution by the IFAI that concluded the transparency of this information at the request of a citizen, after the federal agency declared itself unable to count such information. During the seminar “The right of access to information in Mexico,” carried out by the Institute for Judicial Investigation (Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas) at the UNAM, the commissioner for the IFAI, Maria Marvan, sustained that the war on drugs has overshadowed access to information.
She also indicated that the Attorney General’s Office (La Procuraduría General de la República –PGR) and the Federal SSP are the most reluctant units to give out information. Participants in the seminar also noted that access to information and accountability in Mexico has very little institutional tradition as well as an almost nonexistent dissemination amongst common citizens, which is why it is necessary to reform the mechanisms of transparency and promote them as part of the citizen culture.
Attendees expressed that the SSP should execute an exhaustive search in order to supply the breakdown of murders by year, month, and municipality, as well as the total number of intentional homicides. Likewise, they consider that the number of public security elements who have been killed in the line of duty and the amount of minors killed in confrontations, among other things, should be accessible. Among the attendees were María Marván, Ricardo Becerra, Pedro Salazar, Darío Ramírez, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, Miguel Carbonell, Areli Cano, Luis Miguel Cano, Antonio Martínez and Jenaro Villami. All of whom evaluated, from distinct points, the work of the IFAI.
Sources:
Univision. “Debe SSP dar cifras de homicidios dolosos: IFAI.” Noroeste. 10 Agosto, 2010.
Valadez, Blanca. “Falta transparencia en cifra de ejecutados: IFAI.” Milenio. 11 Agosto, 2010.
