On the morning of May 20, 2011, a group of unidentified people broke into CIMAC’s (Women’s Information and Communication) office in Mexico City, destroying and stealing computers, documents and sensitive information. CIMAC is known for its journalism with a gender perspective, reporting violations of women’s human rights and defending freedom of expression and the work of women human rights defenders.
We cannot ignore the fact that these attacks against CIMAC are directly related to the type of work they do and are intended to intimidate, threaten and limit their work to defend and promote women’s human rights in Mexico.
Hundreds of organizations and women defenders from across Mesoamerica have signed onto a declaration demanding that authorities fully investigate these attacks and implement necessary security measures for CIMAC and its members.
In El Salvador, a similar incident occurred on June 5, 2011, where 15 human rights defenders, most of them women, were violently arrested and detained while peacefully protesting outside the OAS General Assembly meeting on Citizenship Security in the Americas. Many of the defenders arrested were from neighboring Nicaragua and Guatemala. For more information in Spanish, please visit El Nuevo Diario.
