Sep 04 2014
Daily News Flash with Arun Gupta on Report on Torture in Mexico, DOJ Investigation of Ferguson PD, and WHO Stats on Suicide
Uprising’s guest expert Arun Gupta, Journalist and regular contributor to the Guardian, In These Times, The Progressive, and Truthout, and co-founder of the Occupied Wall Street Journal and the Indypendent, analyzes today’s news headlines:
Amnesty International has released a new report on horrific torture and abuse – in Mexico. The new report by Amnesty, details practices of Mexican police, who under the cover of fighting drug cartels, have sharply increased their use of water boarding, electrocution, and other acts of humiliation and pain as well as the eliciting of false confessions. Between 2010 and 2013, the National Human Rights Commission in Mexico took in more than 7000 reports of torture and abuse. Amnesty’s report has found that none of the perpetrators were ever convicted. The report is the latest in a series of investigations by rights groups examining the impunity of Mexico’s law enforcement agencies. Click here for an Al Jazeera America report on the story.
Speaking of impunity among law enforcement agencies, here in the US, the Justice Department has announced it will investigate the Ferguson Police Department in Missouri, where some of the most significant protests against police brutality in recent years took place in the wake of 18 year old Michael Brown’s killing by officer Darren Wilson. The DOJ had already announced it would investigate the Brown case, but now has apparently decided to look into the pattern of widespread and disproportionate police targeting of Ferguson’s majority black residents. Click here for a Guardian newspaper article about the story.
The World Health Organization has just released its first ever comprehensive global report on suicide, concluding that every 40 seconds, someone somewhere in the world kills themselves. That translates into 800,000 people killing themselves each year. The number is a likely underestimate because it relies on countries self-reporting and many countries do not keep a strict count. The report also found that criminalizing suicide seems to do little to deter it. The majority of suicides take place in poorer countries, indicating the obvious correlation between poverty and the kind of depression that leads to suicide. But culture and conflict also plays a role. Click here for a Guardian newspaper article about the story.
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