Mexico ‘consistently fails’ to protect the human rights of its citizens.

(This is a transcript of Kahn’s words, as the sound is a little weak.)

So my friends, we have been talking already around the table and now we’re joined by the media who’d like to hear from us our experiences and impressions of the human rights situation in Mexico.

I’d like to begin my introducing the media who we’re in the room this morning to the situation here as one of a litany of impunity against human rights violations and the failure of the state to competently protect those who need the most protection of their rights. What I have heard round the table have been your personal experiences or of those very close to you or of those that you represent as lawyers, and how the state has continuously failed on a state or federal level to protect human rights and this has been both in terms of policing and the failure of the justice system to deliver in a fair and impartial manner.

But I think there’s also across the table a very strong sense of how the victims and survivors of human rights violations tend to be amongst those who are marginalized – indigenous people, women, the poor, the people who are at the fringes of society. So in the sense what we hear around the table is a failure of justice and a cry for justice. I’m not going to say anymore about that now because I think it is very important that the media hear form you directly how the state has consistently failed to provide you with adequate protection and in some cases actively gone out of its way to attack your rights rather than defend them, in some cases for more than 30 years.