4
families at the domestic and international level. In March 2009, Tlachinollan and the
Center for Justice and Internacional Law requested the expansion of the
precautionary measures ordered in favor of Obtilia Eugenio Manuel and members of
the OPIT (MC 6-05), in order to include the 29 members of Tlachinollan,2 due to the
situation of extreme risk they were facing.
3.
The legal arguments of the Commission to base the request for provisional
measures, in which it pointed out that:
a) up to date, the Mexican State has not adequately or effectively implemented the
measures necessary to protect the live and integrity of the beneficiaries of the
precautionary measures, and it has not acted with total diligence in relation to the
duty to investigate into the facts that gave rise to the measures. In spite of the
enforcement of the precautionary measures, the threats and the attacks against the
life and physical integrity of the beneficiaries had increased in the last months and
had directly affected other human rights defenders and their families, that is, the
members of Tlachinollan and the next-of-kin of Raúl Lucas Lucia and Manuel Ponce
Rosas, who were not protected by the precautionary measures, but who are directly
related to the beneficiaries of such measures. In relation to such people, the
representatives requested, in time fashion, protective measures in their favor and,
upon verifying the situation of extreme gravity and urgency, the Commission decided
to include them in the request for provisional measures instead of ordering
precautionary measures in their favor;
b) Coupled with the death threats and the pursuit of human rights defenders and
their families, there would be statements made by civil and military public officers,
as well as from people near them that, following a pattern of harassment against
such defenders, discredit their work by calling them liars or by connecting them to
alleged drug-trafficking activities. The role of the defenders is limited by the
dissemination of these speeches, which discredit their jobs and generate or affect a
context unfavorable to the defense of human rights. Furthermore, as a consequence
of the facts above mentioned, the potential beneficiaries of these provisional
measures so requested were forced to modify their lives, in order to reduce, where
possible, the risk of suffering irreparable damage to their lives and physical
integrities; and
c) The extreme gravity and urgency is evidenced by the disappearance and death
of two human rights defenders of the area and the serious threats against the people
in whose favor provisional measures are requested. In addition, the nature of the
legal interests threatened, the right to life and physical integrity, as well as the
capacity to continue defending the human rights of the people in respect of whom
provisional measures are requested, constitute the matter of irreparability of the
consequences that this request for provisional measures intends to avoid.
2
Abel Barrera Hernández, Alejandra González Marín, Alejandro Ramos Gallegos, Armando Campos Ochoa, Claudia
Ordóñez Viquez, Dionicio Villano González, Epifania Ramírez Arias, Eulogia Flores Vázquez, Gabino Santiago
Jiménez, Isauro Romero Solano, Isidoro Vicario Aguilar, Jane Eva Jones, Laura Lizette Aragón Castro, Margarita
Nemecio Nemesio, Mario Patrón Sánchez, Matilde Pérez Romero, Neil Arias Vitinio, Odilia Alatorre Villavicencio,
Olivia Arce Bautista, Patricia Bordier Morteo, Paulino Rodríguez Reyes, Prometeo Rodríguez Lucero, Roberto
Gamboa Vázquez, Rommel Cain Chacan Pale, Teresa de la Cruz de la Cruz and Vidulfo Rosales Sierra. People who
normally worked in Tlachinollan- Ayutla: Fidela Hernández Vargas, Juan Castro Castro and Rogelio Téliz García.