Municipal, state and federal authorities have come together to launch a major anticrime offensive in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, which lies on the border of the US and has attracted much attention due to one set of unusual statistics: the murder of 258 women in and around the city over the past 10 years. Interior minister Santiago Creel was present at the launch of the Programa Integral de Seguridad (PIS, 'Integral Security Programme') which will involve the deployment of 1,200 municipal police, 300 officers of the federal 'preventive police' (PFP), 200 of the state's judicial police, and an undisclosed number of agents of the federal chief prosecutor's office (PGR). The programme will unfold along three parallel tracks: investigation of the murders, prevention of further murders, and promotion of women's rights.
So far the authorities have dismissed the possibility of a mass serial murderer at large, while acknowledging that some cases may be the work of three multiple killers. Rosa Delia Cota Montaño, who chairs the special monitoring commission set up by the lower chamber of congress to follow the Ciudad Juárez murders, says that a multi-disciplinary group set up by the PGR will look into all possibilities - including gangs of policemen or former policemen, satanic sects, organ 'harvesting' and people-trafficking. Cota Montaño says that of the 258 cases of murders of women in Ciudad Juárez, 99 are considered closed, 51 are in the hands of the judiciary and 108 are still being investigated.
The day after the PIS was launched, three more bodies of women were found in the desert close to San Agustín, 40 kilometres east of Ciudad Juárez.
* Fourteen potential areas of indigenous conflict
There are at least 14 'danger spots' in rural Mexico where conflicts involving indigenous communities may erupt, according to Rodolfo Stavenhagen, the UN's special rapporteur on indigenous rights (and past head of Mexico's indigenist institute), who has recently conducted an inspection tour of six states with large indigenous populations (Chiapas, Chihuahua, Guerrero, Jalisco, Oaxaca and Sonora). He also said that there are some 400 areas at risk because of land disputes.
Stavenhagen says that Mexico's indigenous communities are not solely afflicted by land tenure and use problems, but also by human rights abuses, disadvantages regarding the administration of justice, social exclusion and extreme poverty. He also identifies as risk factors the 'excessive militarisation' and presence of 'paramilitary' groups in some areas (an allusion to Chiapas; see page 5). This said, he underlines that land disputes can turn very ugly, as in the clash between indigenous communities in May last year in Agua Fría, Oaxaca, which claimed 26 lives.
* Tracking hostages via satellite
The prospect of monitoring people's movements through an implanted chip detectable via satellite is upon Mexico. It is being launched by Solusat, a local affiliate of the US firm Applied Digital Solutions (ADS), which is aiming at hospital use - and potential kidnap victims. The Mexican market is being tapped before that of the US because of the country's high kidnap rate: 437 cases reported in 2002.
Solusat reckons that in about a year's time some 10,000 people will have had the Verichip implanted (it is the size of a grain of rice and costs US$175) and about 70% of the hospitals will be equipped to read the data on the chip. The firm hopes to move on later to two other markets with security problems: cars and containers.
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