HRP Lecturer on Law Stephanie Erin Brewer Testifies at Public Hearing Before Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Human Rights Violations in Mexico
Harvard Law School Lecturer on Law and former HRP Henigson Fellow Stephanie Erin Brewer testified at a public hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concerning the pattern of human rights violations occurring in Mexico due to the deployment of the armed forces to carry out civilian policing tasks.
Stephanie is the International Legal Officer at the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Center Prodh) in Mexico City, where much of her work over the past year has focused on the human rights consequences of Mexico’s militarization of public security. Last summer she coordinated a preliminary study to systematize data on human rights abuses committed by the military since President Felipe Calderón took power. In the public hearing before the Inter-American Commission in Washington DC, she and other representatives of Mexican civil society provided the Commission with statistical data, case studies, and other evidence demonstrating that the use of the military to combat crime has not only failed to reduce criminal violence (which has greatly increased in the last few years), but has provoked widespread cases of torture, arbitrary detention, and other violations including numerous arbitrary executions in military checkpoints.
The civil society representatives proposed that the Commission visit the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, or Guerrero to observe the human rights situation, and that it require the Mexican government to report on steps taken to hold human rights violators accountable. In referring to the hearing in its subsequent press release, the Commission stated that it is “following with particular attention” the situation of human rights under national policies designed to fight crime.
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Fourth Circuit Reinstates Case Against Former Minister of Defense of Somalia
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has ruled that former Somali General Mohamed Ali Samantar can be sued in U.S. courts for violations of human rights, for his role in systematizing the use of torture, rape, prolonged arbitrary detention and mass executions against the civilian population of Somalia during the 1980s. The case, Yousuf v. Samantar, was originally dismissed by a lower district court in Virginia, which had found that Samantar was protected under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA). The case was brought on behalf of five Somali survivors, represented by the Center for Justice and Accountability and the law firm Cooley Godward Kronish LLP.
As part of the appeal, the International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) at Harvard Law School submitted an amicus brief on behalf of several torture survivors, their family members, religious organizations and human rights groups, arguing that the FSIA legislation could not bar survivors of torture from suing their perpetrators, under the Torture Victim Protection Act. The Fourth Circuit agreed, saying that “individual foreign government agents like Samantar” were not immune from prosecution, and reversing and remanding the lower court’s decision.
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