The People's Permanent Tribunal, Mexico City
The Permanent People's Tribunal (PPT), was created in 1979 as the successor to the Russell Tribunals on Vietnam (1966-1967) and on the Latin American Dictatorships (1974-1976), has the mission, according to its calling and its Statutes, to raise awareness of all those situations in which the massive violation of fundamental human rights receives no institutional recognition or response, whether at a national or an international level, and to qualify such situations in legal terms.
People who attended to the international prehearing in Seattle listened the voices of those who bravely testify and made accusations. And the judges asked questions for clarification and appeal to their individual and collective senses of social conscience, progressive political values and human rights principles and determine if the voices of the people had made a case that requires culpability and accountability and make a verbal and written summary of their findings within the non-bearing guidelines of the PPT process.
In this International Pre-hearing participated migrants who are living in Oregon, Washington State Vancouver B.C. Canada and small delegation from Mexico. They presented 24 accusations for human right violations against Mexico, Canada and Unite States’s governments and corporations. The final ruling the judges conclude that NAFTA has created the opportunity and fulfillment for “crimes against humanity” by the Mexican, United States, and Canadian governments and corporations.
The PPT opened a Mexico chapter that is dedicated to ‘free trade, violence, impunity and the rights of the Peoples’. The whole process will extend up to 2014. LELO and other community organizations planed and organized an International Prehearing on Immigration on September 13th and 14th of 2014. The main objective of that hearing in Seattle (and New York) was to expose the intent and the impact of NAFTA on the Mexican people and migrants from other countries impacted by similar agreements.
The Mexican Chapter had been articulated around seven representative thematic axes that describe the complex issues that the Mexican society are going through: 1) Dirty war as violence, impunity and lack of justice; 2) Migration, refugee and forced displacement; 3) Femicide and gender-based violence; 4) Violence against workers; 5) Violence against maize, food sovereignty and autonomy; 6) Environmental devastation and people’s rights; and 7) Censorship, disinformation and violence against journalists . Furthermore, it had also been organized transversal axes such as lack of democracy, the crisis of the judicial system, youth, indigenous people - territory and education.
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