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Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus justified the violence of state police officers during a citizen protest over dirty water this Monday, characterizing the participants as “shock groups,” although he promised an investigation into the matter, while activists denounce that the officers used “excessive force.”
On Sunday, 10,000 inhabitants of the Guadalajara metropolitan area, Mexico's second-most important city, protested against the contaminated water reaching their homes—a demonstration that ended with arrests and dozens of injuries, including members of the press and police officers.
Since last March, at least 320 neighborhoods in Guadalajara have been receiving contaminated water in their homes that smells like sewage, contains heavy metals and fecal matter, and has not been chlorinated, according to human rights organizations that examined samples.
In a message posted on his social media, Lemus asserted that a “shock group” of 400 people aimed to “delegitimize” the mobilization and were “armed with stones, pipes, hammers, firecrackers with nails, and gas bombs,” which they used to attack police, sparking a three-hour “confrontation.”
“The violent group destroyed the perimeter stone wall to turn it into projectiles thrown at the officers. The violence ended what began as a legitimate citizen protest. As a result, there were injured protesters, 39 detainees, and 28 injured officers, two of whom are in serious condition,” he stated.
Lemus explained that this situation left “innocent people, families, and journalists documenting the events trapped in the middle of the riot.”
The Governor of Jalisco announced that he has ordered the Prosecutor's Office to review the case of each detained person and to examine videos “to investigate the police's conduct and sanction any possible excessive use of force.”
Various human rights collectives and relatives of the detainees denounced the indiscriminate use of tear gas, rubber bullets, and water against all protesters, including minors and the elderly.
The representative of the Justice and Peace Development Center (Cepad), Denisse Montiel, stated that the police carried out arbitrary arrests in which they tortured and held 49 people of various ages incommunicado for hours before presenting them to the Attorney General's Office.
“(They were) arbitrarily detained (and) were not presented immediately, nor was information regarding their whereabouts provided during the first few hours, so we can consider that there was forced disappearance by elements of the Ministry of Public Security,” she affirmed in a conference.
In the last few hours, 18 people have been released “with serious injuries.” The status and location of the remaining 31 are still uncertain, as the Prosecutor's Office has refused to publish the list of detainees to cross-reference with the documentation held by the collectives, Montiel said.
[Publicidad]