The change in priorities appalled Human Rights Watch (HRW). Acosta has been active in using Mexico's diplomatic weight to help raise international standards for human rights. José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas division of HRW, said that the change threatened President Vicente Fox's commitment to enforcing high standards for human rights across the world.
Acosta had originally been named as a special ambassador for human rights, but became a deputy minister when the senate argued, successfully, that it had to ratify ambassadorial appointments.
During his election campaign and at his inauguration, President Fox said that promotion of better human rights would be his foreign policy priority. This innovation now seems to have ended: Acosta's department is now part of the global issues which handles issues such as drug smuggling, the environment and organised crime and corruption.
The timing of the change looks petulant. The government has been annoyed by criticism from Amnesty International (AI) over its performance in investigating and prosecuting the murders of almost 300 women in Ciudad Juárez over the past 10 years. Last year, Acosta criticised AI for failing to take account of what the Fox government had done to stop the routine use of torture in Mexico.
Ciudad Juárez
The president of AI, Irene Khan, launched an AI report, México: muertes intolerables. Diez años de desapariciones y asesinatos de mujeres en Ciudad Juárez y Chihuahua. She claimed that the murders highlighted the shortcomings in the justice system in the whole country. She said that the authorities' failure to halt the murders was equivalent to allowing them to continue.
AI produced its report after three months of research. It claims that 370 women have been murdered in and around Ciudad Juárez. This is 100 more than the authorities say have been killed. The AI figure is in line with the number of murders which human rights activists say have occurred in the area. The NGOs reckon that another 400 women have also disappeared: the government says that only about 70 women are unaccounted for. Another 75 unidentified female bodies have also been found.
AI did not claim that there was a single murderer responsible. It pointed out that 137 of the murdered women had been raped before being killed. It also noted that 70% of the murdered women were strangled. Over half the victims were under 20 years old: the youngest was 11. Khan argued that there was evidence of similarities between many of the killings. First, the victims were kidnapped. Most seem to have been held captive for several days, invariably being tortured and sexually abused. Most of the bodies were dumped in the desert or on waste ground around the city.
Since 1999, there has also been a similar pattern of killings in and around the state capital Chihuahua, several hundred kilometres to the south. Norma Ledesma, spokesperson for Justicia Para Nuestras Hijas, whose 16-year-old daughter was murdered in Chihuahua last year, claimed that to be a woman, young and pretty but poor was to be a target for murderers.
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