Mexican Military Injustice

Two Indigenous women in Mexico, Valentina Rosendo Cantú and Inés Fernández Ortega, were both raped by members of the Mexican military in 2002. As they were unable to get justice in Mexico, they took their cases to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which found in their favour in 2010. It is one of of four cases in which the Inter-American Court has issued judgements against Mexico since November 2009 for major human rights violations by members of the army.

Mexican authorities were ordered by the Court to carry out effective investigations of the violations, and to reform the military justice system so that all allegations of human rights infractions committed by military personnel are excluded from military jurisdiction and dealt with by the civilian justice system.

Amnesty International is campaigning with the survivors and their families to ask the Mexican authorities to end military jurisdiction over cases of human rights violations committed by members of the military.

“The harm that the government did to me can never be repaired, it will be part of my life forever and I will never forget what happened. I demand justice. I demand that the government accept publicly that it was the military who abused me”. - Valentina Rosendo, January 2009