The 4T consummated the elimination of trusts among them, those protecting human rights defenders and journalists in Mexico.
MEXICO CITY (Times Media Mexico) – The protection of human rights defenders and journalists is on the verge of being eliminated from the Protection Fund.
In recent days, the reforms were published in the Official Journal of the Federation. So, as of this Monday, the money from the trusts will have to be frozen to be returned to the Treasury of the Federation.
The leading researcher of the Trust project in Mexico: Sarahí Salvatierra, assured that there is uncertainty, even knowing what will happen with the resource in the rest of this year since there was still one delivery missing. “The Government is going to have to assume the expense with the budget already assigned. The problem is that if they are going to take away these resources and reduce their current expense, and from here to be assigned – let’s hope that from here to November 20 it will be the same amount – they are going to leave them with this money that they have left of the year, there is not enough budget,” she said.
The researcher of the Centro de Análisis e Investigación Fundar defended that the measure to extinguish the trusts does not eliminate corruption. Still, it does put those who receive the protection measures in a vulnerable situation.
Balbina Flores, a representative in Mexico of Reporters Without Borders, warned that the trust was a way to gain immediate access to protected resources, even though this was not always the case, but that now the resource is labeled in the Budget of Expenditures to the Ministry of the Interior, and could be bureaucratized. “We know that there are severe cases, there is a large group of threatened journalists, all of this requires a directive, and they have not said how they are going to handle it. So yes, not knowing what model they are going to implement generates uncertainty,” she said.
Sarahí Salvatierra explained that trust played a kind of lock so that the money would not be destined for other activities. Still, with the label, in the Ministry of the Interior’s current expenditure, this cannot be assured.
SILENCE FROM SEGOB
Balbina Flores criticized the fact that there is no clear pronouncement on the part of the Ministry of the Interior, not even the Undersecretary of Human Rights, in the face of a severe situation Alejandro Encinas, who is responsible for the issue.
The uncertainty is heightened because there has been no clear pronouncement on the part of the Secretary of the Interior, who is the one to whom Congress delegates the responsibility of reviewing and managing these funds.
Independent Senator Emilio Álvarez-Icaza called the extinction of the Protection Fund a betrayal of the victims and relatives of disappeared persons, human rights defenders, and journalists in the country.
On Twitter, he criticized that López Obrador and his government gave “a treacherous slap in the face to those who believed them” and pointed to Olga Sánchez Cordero and Alejandro Encinas for “keeping quiet like mummies”.
