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| Caribbean-Latin America | |||
| Kerry Kennedy goes to Guerrero | |||
| 2011-08-13 | |||
| By Chris Covert Kerry Kennedy went on a quest for human rights in Mexico two weeks ago, namely in Guerrero state where she met with Abel Barrera Hernandez, a local human rights leader and with the governor of Guerrero Angel Heladio Aguirre Rivero. While she was there she had an interview with a reporter from El Universal where she talked about human rights in Mexico. Kennedy said that the Mexican government "has continued to allow" human rights abuses by the Mexican Army and was a "clear violation" of the Merida Inititative. In her interview, she characterize the Medirida Initaitive as a failure, because of human rights abuses which have taken place in Mexico over the years. The Merida Inititive last year provided the Mexican government funds from the US government, namely the Mexican military with $250 million in aid for the war on drugs. According to the El Universal article, Kennedy said: "What we have seen can be summed up in three things: there is impunity for human rights violations committed by the military because the cases remain under military jurisdiction, when they have to be in the civil there is total impunity for those committing abuses against human rights defenders, and there is a systematic violation of the rights of the indigenous population, particularly those living in extreme poverty." Kennedy has no say as to whether the Merida Initiative continues to be funded, however a human rights proviso agreed to by the Mexican government is the focus of her personal vendetta. She believes that exerting pressure threatening the funding of the Merida Initiative will at least help resolve high profile human rights cases in Mexico, primarily in Guerrero.
Kennedy is herself an educated attorney having graduated from Brown University and from Boston College with a Juris Doctor. She is directly involved with Amnesty International serving as chair of the Amnesty International Leadership Council and is not surprisingly the head of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights. Kennedy is also the author of "Speak Truth to Power", a book hawked by the Center. The Duke University playwright Ariel Dorfman has written a play based on the book. Dorfman is one of the 88 individuals at Duke University who wrongly denounced the lacrosse team in a rape case later proven false.
In an article published at the Huffington Post the June before, the tone of her concern was markedly different than her El Universal interview sounding less like someone who is concerned with human right and sounding more like a radical from the 1960s. In the article she absurdly attempts to draw comparisons between Alabama in the 1960s and Guerrero today, suggesting that a tiny municipality in Guerrero, Atyutla, was Birmingham. She praises Barrera Hernandez and his Tlachinollan Center for Human Rights in the Montaña for "heading a dynamic, indigenous, civil and human rights movement near the town of Ayutla de los Libres." She described an incident of "3,000 white supremacists" who surrounded and harassed a black church in Birmingham which precipitated her father sending 3,000 national guard troops, because "it was the right thing to do." Unlike Alabama in the 1960 Indians in Guerrero have the right to vote and organize in their interests which they have done from the start. Kennedy does not go into much detail about the cases and incidents she mentions, and the reason is that all of the incidents she mentions do not fit her agenda and her worldview that the Mexican military is responsible for all the abuses she decries. Ultimately it does not fit the truth. Kennedy also fails to properly frame her concerns that the abuses have taken place in a shooting gallery among different and disparate actors, and she fails to mention that Guerrero state has been in a guerilla war and an antidrug war together since at least 1996. This series of articles is intended to provide details to the various incidents that Kennedy failed or refused to provide, and to add details which provide a much clearer context for events that have occurred in Guerrero. It is important to consider when reading what Kennedy has written and what she has said, that much of what has been expressed has been lies, whether based on incomplete information, sloppiness or plain mendacity on Kennedy's part.
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| Posted by:badanov |
| #10 And what's CAROLINE been up to??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2011-08-13 22:00 |
| #9 Ms. Kennedy, thank you for your visit, please take this commerative cartel soccer ball on your next ski trip. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2011-08-13 21:33 |
| #8 Why do we post such trash? Shorter answer: so that we know our enemies... |
| Posted by: Steve White 2011-08-13 16:57 |
| #7 Wonder if she got any driving or flying pointers from her various (now dead) relatives...... |
| Posted by: USN,Ret. 2011-08-13 16:46 |
| #6 Why do we post such trash? Well, Jim, you are certainly free not to read this post. As for the wherefores, on matters that concern Mexico's national security, Ms. Kennedy appears to be long on agenda, and rather short on the truth, and if you have read Rantburg enough, you would know this instinctively to be a common liberal affliction. I cannot allow her and her ilk to get away with their own special kind of impunity that they have routinely accuse Mexican security forces. |
| Posted by: badanov 2011-08-13 14:59 |
| #5 When will the nation grow up and realize that only one Kennedy was good for it? Only one was a decent leader (though a failure) and only one was a true democrat. The rest starting with that A-hole Joe were thugs and gangsters. Kennedys are half the reason this nation is in a shithole right now. The curse lives on. |
| Posted by: newc 2011-08-13 13:22 |
| #4 Ah, another Kennedy with a hobby and a lotta time on their hands. I've seen how dangerous that is... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2011-08-13 11:51 |
| #3 well, Jim. Mexico is nearly a failed state next door. The libs seem to be trying to curtail the military's war on the narco-terrorists. See where this is going? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2011-08-13 11:18 |
| #2 Why do we post such trash? |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2011-08-13 10:37 |
| #1 Never heard of her. Hopefully, will never hear from her again. Gives libs like myself a bad name... |
| Posted by: Shakey Steve 2011-08-13 07:53 |