A panel at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference last week called on Americans to take action to help end the drug war in Mexico, even as Human Rights Watch releases as a damning report on government killings, tortures, and disappearances in the drug war.
A shocking new report from Human Rights Watch details how Vietnamese "drug treatment centers" don't provide treatment, but do provide abuse, torture and virtual slave labor for private companies to exploit.
Richard Branson blogs about being invited onto the global commission, on virgin.com.
The Global Commission on Drug Policy, made up of former heads of state and other international dignitaries, is calling for fundamental reform of the international drug control system.
The hangman has been -- and will be -- getting a real work out in Iran. (Image via Wikimedia.org)
Iran has already executed more than 125 people for drug trafficking so far this year, and more than 300 await the hangman. It claims that's the only way to stop the flow of drugs destined for Europe.
James Peron, President of the Moorfield Storey Institute, recounts the recent drug prohibition related death of a young husband, father, and Iraq veteran who was shot at 71 times by heavily armed men who then allegedly prevented medical assistance from being given until he was dead. The heavily armed men were from the Pima County Sheriff's Department. Another drug raid gone bad.
With the current session of Mexicoâs Congress scheduled to expire Friday, members of Mexicoâs House of Deputies have less than a week to deliberate over extremely controversial changes to the countryâs National Security Law that would give the President the power to deploy Mexicoâs Armed Forces against broadly defined internal threats to Mexican national security. PT and Convergencia parties say that the 83-page initiative to change the law constitutes a threat to individual liberties and could create a state of exception in Mexico that would effectively put the country under military control. They remain deeply skeptical of proposed changes to the law, which advocate, among other things, the monitoring and recording of private communication for intelligence-gathering purposes. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch have drawn attention to frequent abuses by the Mexican military and contend that there is a widespread systemic failure to prosecute human rights violations in Mexican military courts.
The busts and arrests go on, but so does the violence. (Image via Wikimedia)
The director of the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, Louie Gilot, said cases of Mexicans fleeing drug prohibition violence have risen significantly over the past two years and that the asylum seekers include former police officers, rights activists, journalists, business leaders and even government officials. Carlos Spector, an attorney, said the U.S. government is reluctant to grant political asylum to Mexican applicants because doing so means recognizing that aid from Washington is financing military abuses against the Mexican civilian population.
Hitmen are killing human rights workers across Ciudad Juárez -- the city in Mexico most affected by drug prohibition violence -- in brazen attacks that activists say authorities are unable and unwilling to halt.