Journalist petitions UN rights body to probe Mexico abuses
Cacho was in Geneva to petition the UN Human Rights Committee to look into her own case.
GENEVA (AFP) - High-level corruption has created an atmosphere of impunity in Mexico, an investigative journalist lamented Tuesday, urging the UN to probe abuses against her and other reporters in the country.
"Impunity rules in Mexico," said Lydia Cacho, a high-profile Mexican journalist who has worked to highlight violence against women and children, pointing to statistics showing 94 percent of all criminal cases go unpunished in the country.
Her comments came amid angry demonstrations in Mexico over the disappearance of 43 students who have been missing since gang-linked police attacked them on September 26.
Cacho was in Geneva to petition the UN Human Rights Committee to look into her own case, stretching from an arbitrary arrest in 2005 through 20 hours of torture, numerous death threats and a lack of due process.
Cacho was arrested after the publication of her book "The Demons of Eden," in which she lifted the lid on a paedophilia network, pointing the finger of blame at Mexican businessmen and politicians.
She claims her arrest was orchestrated by criminal gangs and local officials implicated in her probe. She said she had heard tapped phone conversations in which a mobster bought off a judge with the offer of a trip to Las Vegas in order to jail her, and another telling the head of the jail to organise that Cacho be raped.
Cacho s case went through the Mexican judicial system up to the Supreme Court, which did not rule in her favour despite substantial evidence, she said, charging the judges caved to political pressure.
Her case, she said, is "really an x-ray of how the justice system works regarding the link between organised crime and government officials and how impunity is constructed."
"We have the evidence ... of how the case moved from one court to the other and how civil servants and government officials got involved in order for impunity to happen at every outlet," she said.
Cacho, the recipient of Sweden s prestigious Olof Palme Prize and other awards, said she was bringing her case to the UN as a typical example of the abuses against hundreds of Mexican reporters who might not have the same ability to step forward.
"Contrary to some of my friends... I m still alive to tell the story," she said.
According to the Article 19 organisation dedicated to protecting the freedom of expression, 77 journalists have been killed in the country since 2002.
Cacho, who claims to have received numerous death threats, mainly from criminal gangs but also directly from politicians, said she expected other journalists to follow her example and petition the Human Rights Committee to investigate and raise the issue with Mexico.
She said she would also raise the issue with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad Al Hussein on Wednesday.
