Narco News 2001
March 17, 2001
Narco-trafficking,
Journalism and Human Rights
By Miguel
Concha
"We who
are Civil Society and its organizations - the final document
affirmed - with the decided support of a mass media genuinely
committed to democratic values... propose to consult, in the
most open, professional and objective manner, what our societies
think and decide about the deregulation and progressive decriminalization
of the production, commerce and consumption of certain types
of drugs."
Narco News Publisher's
Note: Only about two years ago, December 1998, at the
Investigative Journalists conference in Tijuana, this journalist
proposed greater attention by members of our profession on the
decriminalization of drugs as a means to end the violence and
corruption associated with drug trafficking, as well as prohibition-related
attacks on freedom of the press. While various colleagues privately
expressed agreement, the response in public forums was either
indifferent or opposed.
One border-zone stringer
for a national daily (who, despite a salary level of five dollars
per article, arrived at that 1998 forum in an expensive three-piece
suit and sparkling wristwatch; attired very differently than
the majority of working journalists present), ridiculed the idea
that journalists should tackle the drug laws. "When it is
convenient to me to become a federal legislator, I will offer
an opinion," he sneered. "But journalists don't make
the laws, we cover them."
Also at that 1998 forum,
one of Mexico's leading academic experts on drug trafficking,
Jorge Chabat, responded that he could not embrace the question
of legalization of drugs.
By April of 1999, as noted
in Issue #1
of Narco News,
Chabat had changed his mind and was already speaking about the
need to decriminalize drugs. Soon others began to "come
out of the closet" as drug policy reformers.
Suddenly, a sea change
is in the air. At the recent gathering in that same violence-torn
border city of Tijuana, March 8 and 9, co-sponsored by the same
Investigative Journalists organization, the journalism profession
woke up en masse with the understanding: the wave of attacks
on press freedom in our hemisphere are directly caused by the
prohibition of drugs.
Father Miguel Concha,
Mexico's leading human rights advocate, head of the Dominican
Order of the Catholic Church in Mexico, writes in todays La Jornada
about that sea change. We translate it so that English-speaking
readers will not be left in the dark by their own commercial
media, so far behind the Mexican journalists in realizing the
grave threat to press freedom posed by the US-imposed war on
drugs.
- Al Giordano
Narco-trafficking,
Journalism and Human Rights
Translated from La
Jornada, March 17, 2001, by Narco News
By Miguel Concha
With
the goal of evaluating the current
state of narco-trafficking and the challenges it raises for freedom
of expression and human rights, a group of journalists, investigators,
academics, media representatives, Non-Governmental Organizations
and public institutions for the protection of human rights met
in one of the chilliest places on the border and bastion of the
Arellano-Felix cartel: the city of Tijuana, in Baja California.
They did so to make an independent and positive criticism of
the anti-drug actions and policies undertaken in the past decade
by the Mexican and U.S. governments.
Preliminarily, based on available facts,
the seminar considered that if there have been partial successes,
the fight agaisnt drugs is being lost as a whole. The trends
point to higher production, diversification and consumption.
These anti-drug policies have been managed with basically political
and police criteria, throwing aside preventative, educational
and health aspects as necessary balances in the combat against
supply and demand. It can be affirmed that there has been no
universal or whole approach, but rather, a marked unilateral
preponderance of principals and mechanisms imposed by the U.S.
government on the rest of the international community.
To change this situation it is necessary
that the governments of Mexico and the United States, making
a drastic and objective self-criticism, recognize the evident
and undebatable failure of the strategies and policies oriented
predominantly or exclusively to the seizure, eradication, interdiction
and repression that has been practiced for decades with scarce
or nil positive final results. It is now time that those who
are primarily affected by the scourge of drugs, that is to say,
our own societies - particularly in the border zones - participate
in a general, transparent and solid manner in the elaboration
of criteria and in the definition and reorientation of the means
used in the anti-narcotics fight.
We
who are Civil Society and its organizations
- the final document affirmed - with the decided support of a
mass media genuinely committed to democratic values, must involve
ourselves fully and without dilating further in the design and
application of public opinion polls and the promotion of ballots,
referenda and plebiscites to bring elements of analysis and public
debate upon themes that have been taboo under many governments.
Concretely - said the participants gathered in the seminar organized
by the Mexican Academy of Human Rights - we propose to consult,
in the most open, professional and objective manner, what our
societies think and decide about the deregulation and progressive
decriminalization of the production, commerce and consumption
of certain types of drugs.
It seems to us to be of major importance
to return again to a critical analysis, from the perspective
of an organized Civil Society, the pros and cons of the policies
that direct the economic, commercial and financial dismantling
of the powerful network of interests, corruption and impunity
that organized crime operates in the area of national and international
drug trafficking. In the era of globalization it is necessary
to generalize and make the anti-drug fight transparent to societies,
the media and the governments, favoring an effective international
cooperation marked by respect for sovereignty and human rights.
With the participation of recognized experts
and specialists such as Guadalupe González, Peter Smith
and Luis Astorga, as well as experienced journalists, among them
José Reveles, Miguel Badillo, Rogaciano Méndez,
Omar Raúl Martínez and Pedro Enrique Armendares,
in the debates that the Human Rights and Citizen Protection Office
of Baja California, the Investigative Reporters Center and the
Mexican Network for Protection of Journalists and the Media,
made a call to the federal and state judicial authorities, as
well as the public commissions that protect human rights, to
aggressively conduct and conclude investigations of aggressions
against journalists, particularly those that have resulted in
assassinations by drug traffickers.
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