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Apprehended for criticizing the president
On Friday, a Mexican student was apprehended by the President of Mexico’s security guards, after he had called the head of state a hypocrite.
På norsk;)
On the second of October, Mexico celebrated the 40th anniversary of the 1968 student riots. The next day, after an awards ceremony at the presidential palace, Mexican student Andrés Leonardo Gómez Emilsson announced that he thought that Felipe Calderón Hinojosas was a hypocrite.
- We were held against our will for an hour and a half without being told what we were doing there. We were forced to write down everything about our lives, our family, and other personal information. They also took pictures of us, Gómez Emilsson says.
Gómez Emilsson is normally a student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), but is currently taking part in an exchange programme at the Red Cross Nordic United World College, located in Fjaler, Sogn og Fjordane. He was in his home country to receive the national youth award for academic achievement, and used this opportunity to stand up in the assembly and shout at the president.
- I said this because I believe that the president did an undemocratic thing when he was inaugurated as president without having a majority among the voters. I am convinced that this election was not honest, and in that case it is hypocritical to say that you are concerned with preserving democracy, Gómez Emilsson states.
- Human rights are under pressure
According to one of the leading Mexican newspapers, the critical La Jornada, another student called Marco Jiménez Santiago followed this by shouting out: «There is no freedom in this country!»
- I am not worried that anything will happen to me. That would be unwise of the president. I think that one should be able to criticize people that are in a position of power. Freedom of speech is important, Gomez Emilsson says.
Associate Professor of Journalism at Oslo University College, Roy Krøvel, has spent a large amount of time in Mexico, and is not surprised by this incident. He thinks that the universities must take responsibility for stopping these developments.
- Human rights are under pressure in Mexico. Academia should stand behind students who dare to speak up. Student organizations have to get better at establishing contact and collaborating with Mexican student organizations, and the ministry should see how valuable it could be to cooperate with Mexico, which has some of the best universities in Latin America, Krøvel says.
Not the worst culprit
Universitas has previously written about students and student politicians being persecuted and killed in Colombia. Leader of the Latin American Association at the University of Oslo, Alfredo Biamont, does not think that Mexico is one of the worst culprits when it comes to freedom of speech.
- All the same, one must condemn cases such as this one, he states.
The Embassy of Mexico does not agree that human rights are under pressure in Mexico, and emphasizes that the situation has improved considerably during the last 40 years.
- We do not believe that the government is hindering freedom of speech in Mexico. We have freedom of speech and a free press, says Alejandra Martinez Silva at the Embassy of Mexico.
Yet she admits that the political and economic situation in Mexico must be improved in order to guarantee a fairer and more democratic society.
