The military in most cities are there to serve and protect the citizens of it. But in Mexico the opposite seems to be true.
According to the government’s own figures, the armed forces of Mexico are exceptionally efficient killers — stacking up bodies at extraordinary rates.
The authorities say the nation’s soldiers are simply better trained and more skilled than the cartels they battle. But experts who study the issue say Mexico’s kill rate is practically unheard-of, arguing that the numbers reveal something more ominous. The New York Times shares the troubling mexican military kill statistics that suggest something more about the issue.
In many forms of combat between armed groups, about four people are injured for each person killed, according to an assessment of wars since the late 1970s by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Sometimes, the number of wounded is even higher.
But the body count in Mexico is reversed. The Mexican Army kills eight enemies for every one it wounds. For the nation’s elite marine forces, the discrepancy is even more pronounced: The data they provide says they kill roughly 30 combatants for each one they injure.
The statistics, which the government stopped reporting in early 2014, offer a rare, unguarded glimpse into the role the mexican military has assumed in the war against organized crime. In the last decade, as the nation’s soldiers and marines have been forced onto the front lines, human rights abuses surged. And yet the military remains largely untouched, protected by a government loath to crack down on the only force able to take on the fight. Little has been done to investigate the thousands of accusations of torture, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings that have mounted since former President Felipe Calderón began his nation’s drug war a decade ago.
Of the 4,000 complaints of torture that the attorney general’s office has reviewed since 2006, only 15 have resulted in convictions.
“Not only is torture generalized in Mexico, but it is also surrounded by impunity,” said Juan E. Méndez, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture. “If the government knows it is frequent and you still don’t get any prosecutions, and the ones you do prosecute usually wind up going nowhere, the blame lies with the state.”
Mexican armed forces were unwilling to respond to an interview request by the publication. But Gen Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, the defense secretary, has publicly defended the military, saying it is the only institution confronting organized crime — and winning. “We are in the streets because society is demanding us to be there,” General Cienfuegos told the Mexican newspaper Milenio this month.
About 3,000 people were killed by the military between 2007 and 2012, while 158 soldiers died. Some critics call the killings a form of pragmatism: In Mexico, where fewer than 2 percent of murder cases are successfully prosecuted, the armed forces kill their enemies because they cannot rely on the shaky legal system.
Read the full article: New York Times
More: UN rights expert urges Mexican authorities to consider new evidence
