expressly reiterated its request for ratification of the order of the President of
October 25, 2001 (supra having seen 3); it also requested that the
provisional measures should be expanded to include the parents and twelve
siblings of Digna Ochoa y Plácido, and that they should be implemented in
consultation with the interested parties, in the terms established. Lastly, it
requested that the State should be required to provide reports every month,
instead of every two months, and, consequently, that the period for the
Commission to present its observations, once it had received the State’s
reports, should be reduced to four weeks.
8.
The statement of one of the Commission’s assistants on the factors that she
had taken into account when she had agreed that the provisional measures ordered
in favor of Digna Ochoa and others should be lifted:
When we took the decision to request that the measures should be lifted, we
took various factors into consideration. The first was that the Attorney General
had closed the investigation; according to the petitioners, this ended the
possibility of terminating the impunity in this series of threats and harassment,
at that time. I believe that [it is necessary to express a] public mea culpa; we
underestimated the sword of Damocles that impunity represented for the
physical safety of all of us, […] the members of the PRODH Center, who
agreed that the measures should be lifted, because there was no point in
continuing to insist on investigations when the State was not undertaking
them and refused to continue with them.
The lawyer, Digna Ochoa,
manifested her frustration with the ineffectiveness of the administration of
justice and also, to a certain extent, her confidence that […] acts [such as her
homicide] could not happen in present day Mexico. I therefore believe that, in
these circumstances, we, the representatives of the victims, and the victims
themselves made an error in our calculations; we did not believe that impunity
was a sword of Damocles and this error led to fatal consequences for ourselves
and for our colleagues. We made a mistake owing to our frustration in the
face of the response of the administration of justice and of the State of Mexico
itself.
9.
The arguments of the State during the same public hearing, in which it
referred to:
a)
Compliance with its commitment to human rights: the State has
worked with civil organizations and the relevant Government authorities in
order to uproot impunity, and the shameful homicide of Digna Ochoa painfully
and dramatically underscores the scope of impunity. Human rights defenders
play an essential role in any democratic society, their protection is an
obligation for Mexico and work will continue until an environment has been
achieved that ensures their safety and fosters the work they carry out as
promoters of public wellbeing;
b)
Its willingness to implement the protection measures for the members
of the PRODH Center and Bárbara Zamora López, Leonel Rivero Rodríguez
and Pilar Noriega García. It also emphasized that it would always be willing
to provide the safety requirements of these human rights defenders with a
receptive and flexible attitude and was very open to discussions;
c)
The implementation of the measures of protection requested for the
beneficiaries and, in particular, it mentioned progress in the implementation
of the measures in favor of Leonel Rivero Rodríguez and Bárbara Zamora