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.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not