Youths who murdered Mexican activist Chavez sentenced

[muriel_volestrangler]

A judge in Mexico has sentenced three youths to 15 years in prison for the 2011 murder of Mexican activist Susana Chavez.

Ms Chavez was found strangled and with one hand cut off in Ciudad Juarez.

She had been a key figure in the community, drawing attention to the killing of mainly poor women in the northern border town in the 1990s.

She had coined the slogan "Not One More Death", which became popular at protests against the women's killings.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22016263

Am I wrong to suspect that there could be someone other than just 3 youths behind the murder of an activist?

[Judi Lynn]

1. Murdering female activists has been big in Mexico, along with political, environmental ones, etc.

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Susana Chavez[/center]
I don't think there's a chance in the world what happened was the same described by these kids. How likely is it, anyway, that this could actually have been a "random" murder, happening to someone with as many enemies as she undoubtedly had?

Measures are ALWAYS taken to try to silence activists, one way or another, when it appears they have already ignored the earlier threats, and are not likely to back down. She was committed to her beliefs, to her heart, to her society and she was deeply, completely courageous.

I think the authorities are putting out a very slipshod story. Here's an article published by CNN in Spanish in 2011:

Death of Susana Chavez, female activist in Ciudad Juarez, not tied to organized crime, state says
January 14, 2011 | 9:25 am

~snip~
Her death marks the latest addition to a grim figure. By Christmas Eve of last year, 978 women had died violently in the Juarez area since the state began recording the figure separately in 1993, reported El Diario de Juarez in late December (link in Spanish). Significantly, at least 300 of those deaths, or just under a third, occurred in 2010 amid skyrocketing bloodshed due to a war between drug cartels.

Others have been kidnapped, "disappeared," or raped in the violence, which often extends outside Juarez to the rest of Chihuahua state, news reports show. Some of the victims have been policewomen, lawyers, or prominent human rights activists. Many received threats.

But this week, after Chavez's remains were identified, a state prosecutor told reporters the woman was not killed in an organized crime hit, but rather died at the hands of three teenage boys after a night of partying. The teens, each 17 years old, have been arrested and questioned, officials said.

"They said they did not know her. They suddenly ran into her, she wanted to keep drinking, so did they, and well it was an unfortunate encounter," said state prosecutor Carlos Manuel Salas (link in Spanish).

When pressed on the question of whether Chavez might have been killed for her past work and poetry bringing attention to violence against women in Juarez, the prosecutor said: "Absolutely not."

In fresh statements on the case on Wednesday, authorities said that Chavez's mother confirmed that her daughter had been drinking the evening before her death. The teens killed her after Chavez told them she was a police officer, authorities said (link in Spanish).

More:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2011/01/activist-death-ciudad-juarez-susana-chavez-marisela-escobedo.html

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Digna Ochoa [/center]
Will never forget this Mexican murder:

MEXICO: New Investigation Finds Rights Lawyer’s Death a Suicide
By IPS Correspondents
Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jul 18 2003 (IPS) - Mexican social activist and attorney

Digna Ochoa

achieved near-sainthood among human rights defenders after her alleged murder in October 2001, but several investigations have determined that she committed suicide and suggest she was a compulsive "mythomaniac".

Ochoa took her own life with two shots fired from her own gun after setting up a scenario to make it look like she had been murdered, concluded the special prosecutor, according to an announcement Friday.

That thesis – which has outraged the admirers of the respected lawyer-activist, dead at 37 – is the same produced by the first series of investigations of the case.

Human rights defenders and relatives of Ochoa say they feel let down by the outcome of the investigations and insist that she was killed by persons who were threatened by the legal work she was pursuing.

Ochoa’s alleged murder caught the international spotlight, bringing criticisms from international agencies and institutions against Mexico’s shoddy record for protection of human rights.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2003/07/mexico-new-investigation-finds-rights-lawyers-death-a-suicide/

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Thursday, April 27, 2006

The Assassination of Digna Ochoa: A Look at the Life and Death of the Renowned Mexican Human Rights Lawyer

~snip~
We take a look at the life and death of the Mexican human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa. Ochoa was a former nun who went on to represent some of Mexico"s poorest constituents against powerful government interests. She also uncovered torture and other abuses by the Mexican military and police. Ochoa worked on behalf of peasant ecologists in the state of Guerrerro, Zapatistas guerrillas in Chiapas and indigenous Indians in her home state of Verazcruz. At the time of her death, she was defending three men charged with bombing banks in Mexico City to protest against globalization.

In October 2001, Digna Ochoa was found shot dead in her Mexico City office. She was thirty-seven years old and had received many death threats. In fact, when Ochoa was twenty-four she was kidnapped and raped only days after discovering a blacklist of union organizers and political activists in the office of the state attorney general.

Later in her life, she was forced to flee to the United States for her safety. Despite these previous attempts on her life and other evidence pointing to foul-play, Ochoa’s death was declared a suicide by Mexico City prosecutors. Ochoa’s family and fellow human rights activists never accepted the finding and fought for years to have the case re-opened. In February of 2005, prosecutors re-opened the investigation into Ochoa’s death.

More:
http://www.democracynow.org/2006/4/27/the_assassination_of_digna_ochoa_a

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There are so many, many more.

Susana Chavez, I'll bet, wasn't a random, wrong place at the wrong time, chance murder.