Permanent People’s Tribunal will session in Mexico
Radio Mundo Real | 16 April 2012
Permanent People’s Tribunal will session in Mexico
“Free trade, dirty war, impunity and peoples rights” is the title of the new national chapter of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) that aims to expose “structural violence” in Mexico as a result of the implementation of free trade agreements.
The activity will be held on May 27 and 29 in Ciudad Juarez in order to “unveil the Mexican state’s simulation and power deviation mechanisms” that are commonplace in the country.
On this session of the PPT, there will be four work areas: dirty war as the genesis of violence; impunity and the lack of access to justice; migration, refuge and forced displacement; feminicide and violence against women; violence against workers; corn, food sovereignty and autonomy; environmental degradation and peoples’ rights; and lastly misinformation, censorship and violence against journalists.
It is not by chance that Ciudad Juarez was chosen to host the Tribunal: it is one of the most violent cities in the world, where there are nearly 30 murders a day, in most of the cases of women.
The PPT is inspired by the Russel Tribunal, which tried the United States for crimes committed during the Vietnam war and condemned the military dictatorships that operated in South America, as well as the acts committed against the Colombian people in the so called “war on drugs”.
The Tribunal is also founded under the principles of the Universal Declaration of Peoples Rights or 1976 Alger Declaration, the Nuremberg Trials, the UN Human Rights Agreements and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States.
Real World Radio interviewed Ramon Vera [6MB mp3, in Spanish], member of the Network in Defense of Maize and of GRAIN organization to talk about the tribunal.
Vera explained that this process not only aims to expose systematic violence but also to show how free trade agreements give transnational corporations impunity.
