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	Disability Rights International testifies on torture in Mexico by Eric Rosenthal Disability Rights International   27/03/2012   Disability Rights International (DRI) and a coalition of partners from Mexico challenged the Mexican government at a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Eric Rosenthal, Executive Director of DRI, presented video evidence of torture in Mexico’s psychiatric institutions, orphanages and other social care facilities.   DRI called on the IACHR to visit Mexico to witness the atrocious human rights violations taking place in Mexican institutions. “The United Nations has stated that the prolonged use of restraints constitutes nothing less than torture. We found widespread torture in Mexico’s institutions,” said Eric Rosenthal.   DRI’s video testimony shows people tied to beds and wheelchairs – in some cases, for 10 years. Additionally, the video documents the inhumane and unhygienic conditions to which Mexico’s most vulnerable citizens are subjected. Thousands of children and adults are left to languish in near total inactivity, some naked and without access to the most basic hygiene. Without any oversight, children have literally disappeared from Mexican institutions and in some cases, girls detained in institutions were trafficked for sex. DRI also found young adults are held in institutions entirely off the public record, working without compensation – essentially as slave labour.   “We have travelled to Washington, DC to send a loud message to the Mexican government: do not lock up people because they have a disability,” said Raul Montoya, Executive Director of the Colectivo Chuhcan, a Mexican organisation of people with psychiatric disabilities.   DRI filed the petition before the IACHR – a branch of the Organization of American States (OAS), along with Mexican partners: the Colectivo Chuhcan, the Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos (CMDPDH), Documenta, and the Instituto Mexicano de Derechos Humanos y Democracia (IMDHD). The government of Mexico also testified. Visit the related web page
	Khmer gang mutilates children and use them as beggars by CRIN / Pattaya Daily News Cambodia, Thailand   02/04/2012   Police are hunting a barbaric gang that allegedly cut off Cambodian children’s tongues and removed their larynxes before forcing them to beg in Pattaya.   [21 March 2012] - A Pattaya Daily News journalist was informed by social and welfare officers who had detained a seven-year-old mutilated Cambodian boy (he could not say his name ), the boy had been mutilated: his tongue had been cut out and he had scars of backstreet surgery on his neck. It looked like his larynx had been removed.   This boy was arrested while he was roaming around in Pattaya begging for money.   The officers brought the boy to the children''s welfare centre last year. The boy was always tense and paranoid, he could not speak.   The officers from the national centre for prevention and suppression of human trafficking came to question him. They told the child to point at the answers written on the paper: “Yes” and “No” in Cambodian.   It was a tragic story. He had been a normal young boy in Cambodia. But when he crossed to Thailand. He was suddenly mute. He pointed to his cut tongue with terrified eyes. On his neck there was a mark of surgery, the size of a little finger which made the officer believe that they had removed his larynx.   The boy said that there were more boys of his age, also forced to work as beggers. They had all been handicapped, and their arms and legs had been cut off.   The gangs alledgedly abducted the children and cut off their tongues, arms, or legs to make them crippled and they would be easy to control and people would pity them and give them money.   The police have mobilised their forces to find the gang and arrest them.   Mr. Santi Prompat, the Minister of the Social Development and Human Security recently went to Hanoi, Vietnam to join the meeting of ministers in the Mekong region, on the Prevention of human trafficking, with ministers from Cambodia, China, Burma and Vietnam participating. Mr. Prompat presented the case of the Cambodian beggar, and urged the concerned ministers to solve the problem [of human trafficking] as soon as possible. Visit the related web page
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