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No skeletons in our closet, Mexico's Fox tells human-rights commission

Mexican President Vicente Fox said on Friday his government does not fear human-rights scrutiny, days after Amnesty International cited police negligence in the murder investigations of hundreds of women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.

"We don't fear world scrutiny, and this government has no skeletons in the closet," Fox said at the opening of an office of the National Commission for Human Rights in Tijuana, another violent border city and home to drug trafficking gangs.

Since 1993, more than 300 women have been killed in Ciudad Juarez and global human-rights group Amnesty on Monday accused police of negligence and corruption that it said have tainted probes to track down the culprits.

Officials have blamed drug traffickers, domestic violence, serial killers and even Satanic sects for the murders in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

But Amnesty, releasing a report on the slayings, said police routinely fail to investigate properly, fabricate evidence and torture confessions out of innocent people to close cases.

Fox, elected president in 2000 ending 71 years of one-party rule, conceded Mexico had work to do to improve its record.

"There are many situations that must be corrected to end impunity," he said.

Fox stressed, though, that in certain respects Mexico was doing well on human rights.

"It must be appreciated that here people are not jailed or pursued for political reasons, there are no disappeared and no ethnic cleansing," he said.
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