THE JOURNEY

When children are abused and traumatized for long peroids of time, it can effect their entire life. They can develop severe post traumatic stress disorder that will last a lifetime and they can develop self abuse syndrome . To over come childhood abuse, torture, trauma it takes a lot of work but it can be done.

Here is my story THE JOURNEY OF SR PAULINE (you have to down load the link and it is safe)

Huellas De Esperanza Prison Dog Program Argentina interview with Sr Pauline

WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH RELIGIOUS FREEDOM???

ST FRANCIS AND ST DOMINIC

The saints inspire us to think about their lives, to look at the works that they have done while they were alive... their hardships and all the misunderstandings that they have endured as they crossed bridges and walked down pathways to the end of their life.

For me, it is difficult to see just one saint or saints of just one order and not recognize the good in all the saints, supporting saints of different orders.  I have a list of saints that have inspired me in my journey in this life and two of them are St Francis and St Dominic.   I am a Dominican, following the Dominican pathways but also the Franciscan pathways are with me because they are the same roadway.   St Catherine of Siena the Dominican and St Margaret of Cortona the Franciscan inspire.   I embrace the Dominicans and the Franciscans.. and all the others whose life and work bring me closer to the heart of God, which is the Father of all of the Saints.

WALK THE BRIDGES AND PATHWAYS OF COURAGE TO THE FINISH LINE

THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE ~ Photos and messages by Sister Pauline Quinn op

JOURNEY IN FAITH

DON'T GIVE UP ~ THERE IS HOPE

BOLATTE PRISON HORSE PROGRAM ~ ITALY

PRISONERS CHANGING THEIR LIVES THROUGH DANCE

FEEL CALLED TO BECOME A DOMINICAN BROTHER OR PRIEST?

VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS ~ COME HOLY SPIRIT

Take a few moments to listen and let the Peace of the Spirit fill your hearts

ON DEATH ROW

Since the late 1970s, penology in the United States has steadily turned away from hope in the power of rehabilitation and reform and has instead embraced an ideology of incapacitation and revenge. In the face of such cynicism and indifference to the plight of the incarcerated (and their families), Catholic prison ministry calls out more than ever for American priests to become involved in what some have termed the “prison-industrial complex.”

It is in this darkness that I see the light of God every day shining forth. Since my first experiences in prison ministry, I have learned over and over to see the face of Christ in the prisoners as well as in those who guard them. This Easter provided a good example. I have been working with a man on death row (, who studied Catholicism in his cell and desired to be baptized. I got permission from the warden to baptize him on Easter Monday.

Death row is a maximum-security area. All who enter it must don a stab-proof vest before meeting with inmates who are always kept locked up separately from staff - in other words: there is no human contact. Even when out of their cells, the prisoners are handcuffed and shackled with waist and leg chains.

Baptizing him had to be accomplished within these security constraints. With his hands cuffed behind him, and attached to a chain around his waist, he was escorted down the tier of cells to the entryway of the building housing the “Condemned” prisoners. A few staff, by his invitation came to witness his baptism. The normally noisy hallway became quiet and uncharacteristically peaceful as we began. He read a passage from Romans 6: “Are you not aware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” I had to hold the book for him as his hands were handcuffed behind his back.

The words of the ritual were hauntingly powerful as we stood against a black-painted wall, a wall that hid from our view the old Gas Chamber behind it. “If we have been united with him through likeness to his death, so shall we be through a like resurrection.” The words of St Paul challenged the whole machinery of death around us.

The words blessing the water were similarly a rejection of the power of death, violence and revenge: Light, Hope, Healing, Rebirth, Joy, Peace, Love, each word, each symbol hit like a sledgehammer against what promised only despair, only death. We who were gathered in that dark corner in that gloomy building that morning witnessed in the Baptism a clear sign of God’s grace shining into one of the darkest corners of our world. “Do you reject Satan? I do. And all his works? I do, and all his empty promises? I do.” This is why I love being a priest.

In a final breathtaking sign, as I prepared to anoint him with Chrism, he said, “Can you bless my hands as well?” In order to do so, he had to turn and offer me his hands, handcuffed behind his back. The same hands that took lives received the anointing with the chrism of salvation. The promise of liberation from those shackles brought tears to my eyes.

Catholic chaplain

HEART for SERVICE. Called to Serve

Untitled from Grand Rapids Dominican Sisters on Vimeo.

The Dominican Sisters ~ Grand Rapids are offering a service program open to college-age women (and recent graduates) The goal of the program, Called to Serve, is to offer young women, within the context of a Catholic Dominican community, an opportunity to:

create community
serve those who are most vulnerable
pray together
study the issues that affect those we are serving

A TRIBUTE TO SERVICE DOGS

GOD and Dog

ST DOMINIC'S DAY ~ MAY 24

Feast of St. Dominic August 8th
St Dominic Day May 24 - Translation of his relics

Dominic Guzman

St. Dominic feeding the poor

During the year Catholics the world over set aside days to mark and remember the efforts of saints who worked for God and the Church. The day set aside for the remembrance of a specific saint is known as a Feast Day, and time is set aside to attend mass, say special prayers, or participate in special meals or celebrations.

St. Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans) was a man who led an austere life dedicated to God. He traveled widely, but always in humility, without pomp or retainers, and often even without his shoes.

He was dedicated to education, believing that knowledge would open peoples' eyes to the truth about the Lord. He is the patron saint of scientists, astronomers and astronomy, all of which reflect his love of learning and spreading knowledge.

St. Dominic's Feast Day is August 8th. Originally celebrated on August 4th, the day of his death, it was moved to the 8th after the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. He died on August 6th, 1221, on the Feast of the Transfiguration. The Feast of St. Dominic is widely celebrated, as he is a powerful figure in Church history.

He was well-known even in his lifetime as a great and holy man; so much so that Dante's poem Paradiso includes lines about Saint Dominic and his work. On the Feast Day of St. Dominic many people say prayers for guidance and light, much as the saint himself did.

saint dominic quotes:
"Arm yourself with prayer rather than a sword;
wear humility rather than fine clothes."

St Dominic Quotes:
"I kept on digging the hole deeper and deeper looking for the treasure chest until I finally lifted my head, looked up and realized that I had dug my own grave."
- [Doubt]

A man who governs his passions is master of his world. We must either command them or be enslaved by them. It is better to be a hammer than an anvil.
-Quote of St. Dominic de Guzman

Blessed Pope John Paul II, A FRIEND OF THE POOR

Sr Pauline Quinn op recieving Communion by Pope John Paul II

To experience meeting him after working so long and hard in Rome helping the poor made me have faith that God will not abandon me.

How Great God Is To Have Created This...

NOT BROKEN

Amando IBANEZ OP ~ NOT BROKEN. A MOVIE TO SEE

Man of Peace: Don Samuel Ruiz 1924-2011

A Man of Peace: Don Samuel Ruiz 1924-2011
Tuesday, 25th January 2011 - 18:39
It was a remarkable mass for a remarkable man.

The news spread rapidly yesterday morning of the death of Bishop Samuel Ruiz. He died at the age of 86, the day that marked 51 years since his ordination as Bishop of the Diocese of San Cristobal. By 2:30 the Mexico City church had filled with an unusual group of religious leaders, peace activists and figures who have marked Mexican politics over the years. All recalled their work alongside Tatik ('father' in Tzeltal) with a bittersweet blend of loss and gratitude. (...)

Click Here for the whole article

CONVERSION OF ST PAUL ~

"...a great light from the sky suddenly shone around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?' I replied, ‘Who are you, sir?' And he said to me, ‘I am Jesus the Nazarene whom you are persecuting.'" (Acts 22:6-8) Who are you that am I persecuting?

That is another way to phrase the question. What did Saul of Tarsus discover in his conversion, in his turning? He turned to face the true subject of his persecutions of the Church: not Stephen at whose stoning he assisted, not the Christians of Damascus he wished to arrest, but he who was within them, strengthening them: Saul turned to face Jesus Christ. This is the secret that was unveiled to the apostle Paul, that set him free, that blinded him: the mystery hidden to unaided reason, but enlightening the inward eyes of faith: The mystery of Christ dwelling in his Church.

Complete text click here...

LEAVING ALL THINGS BEHIND

Do Not Forget Them...

My friend Sr Giovanna works in Southern Sudan, helping people. We do not know the sadness and real sorrows that other people face in countries that have no one to protect them. Do not forget them.

Pray for Sr Giovanna and others who are in such dangerious places of the world that they may be safe, helping those who have been hurt...

From: Giovanna
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2011 5:32 AM
To: Sr Pauline Quinn op
Subject: from Sr. Giovanna..

Dear Sr. Pauline, I was happy to hear from you. Yes, I am also working with displaced refugees from Congo due to the attacks of the rebels from North Uganda, the Lord's Resistance Army. Let us pray for each other, God bless
Sr. Giovanna

FILM ABOUT ST DOMINIC ~ OFFICAL TRAILER

Down’s Syndrome Girls Respond to a Religious Vocation

Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb



The Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb are a contemplative community that enables girls with Down’s syndrome to respond to a religious vocation.

To Offer Oneself to God in witness to the Gospel of Life

Together for a contemplative life

To consecrate one’s life to God, offering it for love of the weakest and most deprived of our neighbours, this is our vocation! By accompanying them, we want to enable young, intellectually disabled girls to offer a consecrated life to God and to the Church.

To allow those who have the “last place” in the world, to hold in the Church the exceptional place of spouses of Jesus Christ. To allow those who depend on others for their everyday life to take in charge, in their prayer, the intentions that are entrusted to them. To allow those whose life is held in contempt to the extent of being in danger from a culture of death, to witness by their consecration to the Gospel of Life.

The Institute of the Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb, a contemplative vocation, offer young girls with Downs the possibilty of realising their religious vocation. This realisation is made possible only by the support of sisters without this disability, who have responded to a special call to consecrate themselves to God with their disabled sisters to form one community with them.

Today, more girls with Down’s Syndrome are knocking at our door. To respond to their request, our family needs new vocations. Vocations to share a contemplative life with “the smallest in the Kingdom”.

Together in work and prayer

Guided by the wisdom of St Benedict, we teach our little disabled sisters the manual labour necessary for their development. We live poverty in putting ourselves at their disposal. With them, we share the work of everyday life.

The office, adoration and the praying of the rosary are adapted to their rhythm and their capacities. In a spirit of silence, our prayer feeds every day on the Eucharist and on the meditation of the Gospel.

Close to the abbey of Fontgombault, we benefit from its spiritual support.

The Institute of the Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb

The community was founded in 1985, and canonically recognised in 1990 as a public association by the Archbishop of Tours. It settled in Blanc in 1995, and was erected as a religious institute of contemplative life by the archbishop of Bourges in 1999.

The Little Sisters now have at their disposal a priory on the edge of the town. Here, for a period of vocational discernment, they can receive young girls touched by the spirit of poverty and dedication, ready to offer a whole existence to the service of Christ in the person of their sisters with Down’s Syndrome.


At the school of St Therese of the Child Jesus

We follow every day the “little way” taught by Saint Therese; knowing that “great actions are forbidden to us”, we learn from her to receive everything from God, to “love for the brothers who fight”, to “scatter flowers for Jesus”, and to pray for the intentions entrusted to us.

[Text from a leaflet produced by the community, trans. bat Ionah. ]

The community was founded with the encouragement of Jerome Lejeune, and is currently supported by, among others, the Lejeune Foundation, according to this page. One sister made her perpetual profession last June.

Bishop Raul Vera Lopez op is a fighter for Human Rights and Social Justice

FEARLESS MEXICAN BISHOP RECIEVES THE 2010 RAFTO HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD. José Raúl Vera López (65), the Catholic bishop of Saltillo, Northern Mexico, is awarded the Rafto Prize 2010 for his struggle for human rights and social justice. He is an uncompromising critic of power abuse and a fearless defender of migrants, indigenous peoples, and other groups at risk in Mexican society.

Human rights crisis in Mexico
SPEECH BY FR. RAÚL VERA LÓPEZ, O.P. BISHOP OF SALTILLO, MEXICO

Rafto Symposium 2010
Grand Selskapslokaler, Bergen, Norway
5 November 2010

As Mexico celebrates the bicentennial of its independence and the centennial of its revolution, the reality is that we are seeing the most aggressive human rights violations against its population and against migrants who pass through its territory.

Talking about human rights in the world today, particularly in Mexico, is inevitably to denounce the violent death and exclusion of millions of men, women and children. This situation challenges us to confront the structural causes leading to systematic violations of human rights and seek solutions at local, regional and international levels. Such a challenge can only be addressed by discovering the worth and dignity of human nature as the base from which to articulate efforts as an international society to defend and promote human rights collectively and in an organised manner.

Keys to understand the Mexican crisis
Mexico is currently suffering the consequences of a socio-political and socio-economic structure that generates systematic violation of human rights. The political regime strives to follow one rule: that of impunity and injustice. The effects of this choice are the dismantling and weakening of the state through questionable democratic processes. Dismantling the state enables mechanisms for the operation of highly profitable businesses enriching only a few people and a lack of regulations to determine the origin and destination of profits. The entire situation creates an environment of growing poverty for the vast majority of the Mexican population, institutionalised violence, and a culture of murder.

The current institutional war against organised crime in Mexico is having disturbing consequences for the population. I perceive this institutional war as a mere simulation, because the main elements supporting and feeding the power of criminal mafias are not being targeted, namely: flow of money and political support. Organised crime mafias have infiltrated Mexican political structures, and public institutions in charge of law enforcement and security to an alarming extent. Economic power used by mafias to corrupt people at all levels is increasing exponentially. They can corrupt public officials, private companies and also the business and financial centres that do their money laundering. This economic power helps them renew their structures when they lose members or when one of the senior bosses is killed or imprisoned. This is why, in reality, government actions have little or no effect on the mafias.

The government is confronting organised crime primarily in a warlike manner; using armed forces, with little or almost no law enforcement, and appearing increasingly weak before the power of criminal gangs. As a consequence, the population is at the mercy of mafias without anyone or anything protecting them. This situation facilitates the violation of the rights all people have to life, peace, freedom, security and integrity. The Mexican state currently does not protect or guarantee the life or property of its citizens. The country is falling apart. The common agreement now seems to be focused on a false “legality” deprived of any ethical dimension, used to prosecute those (companies, public institutions and officials) who make it possible for organised crime to obtain financial resources and weapons. But that alleged “legality” actually ensures priority is given to the accumulation of more wealth by renegade associations of large companies, with the subsequent reduction of workers’ rights.

For over 30 years, the neoliberal economic model has been adopted and assumed in Mexico with all the severity that one can imagine. It has lead to systematically growing poverty, widening social inequality and amplification of inequality in general. The Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico (NAFTA) has benefited large capitals, but has reduced the quality of life of over 80% of the population. Male and female workers have been left to the mercy of employers, whose rights are openly and non-ethically protected by the authorities above those of the workers. This lack of protection for workers and reduction of labour rights is regrettable.

Lack of protection is a widespread situation in Mexico. Freedom of association, which already had many threats before, is currently subject to persecution, reduction and excessive control. Independent trade unions that care for workers and were out of governmental control are being dismantled and removed. Peasants and indigenous people are being denied progress and access to a decent quality of life. There is also exclusion among young people living in urban areas; the rector of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM) reported that nearly three million young people cannot access the education system and have no job either.

Another situation occurring at an alarming increasing rate in the State of Coahuila and northern part of Mexico is forced disappearances. Diocesan Centre for Human Rights, Fray Juan de Larios, has documented 84 cases of missing people only in the State of Coahuila. Press sources speak of more than a thousand people missing across the northern border, but so far neither the state nor the Federal Government has conducted investigations. Instead of working to protect families, both levels of government have managed to make the situation invisible by creating information blackouts for the media. Assault, intimidation, threats and kidnappings of male and female journalists have increased over the past two years. Not to mention the murder of two reporters in the Diocese of Saltillo and three attacks on the media (two on print media and one on television media) working in the State of Coahuila. Amnesty International (AI) in its 2010 report spoke of at least a dozen journalists murdered nationwide in 2009 in relation to public safety issues and corruption. According to the Foundation for Free Expression (FUNDALEX) so far, in 2010, ten journalists have been killed in the country, making Mexico the most risky country for this activity.

These facts demonstrate the Mexican state’s current inability to ensure its citizens’ safety and freedom of expression, information and truth, something which we all have and which are essential in respect of future actions and complaints. It signifies a waiving of the duty to protect human rights. It also is linked to the corruption of officials who, instead of promoting and enforcing the rule of law, have decided to ally themselves with the criminals to their benefit, enabling them to impose their rules on society.

Kidnapping of migrants: "A humanitarian tragedy"
In late 2007, organised crime groups began to take over territories through which migrants frequently passed. Then, kidnapping and extortion started to take place systematically. In May 2009 the National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) estimated that over a period of six months, 9,758 migrants were kidnapped throughout the country. This number shows that systematic crimes against migrant populations in Mexico are widespread.

Brutality is a feature of this problem. Victims suffer all kinds of torture, cruel and degrading treatment, psychological and physical punishment, and murder. These events take on a more serious dimension when it is known that organised crime operates in collusion with or with the consent of local authorities. Victims have said that municipal police can be directly linked to the crimes and that agents of the National Migration Institute (INM) and the Federal Police (PFP) quietly observe from their checkpoints as men, women, children and adolescents are taken hostage, and undertake no action to free the victims and stop offenders.

Victims are mostly migrants from Central American countries such as Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, but also include people from South American countries. More than two months ago the news published the abominable and outrageous slaughter of fourteen women and fifty-four men from Central America, Ecuador and Brazil. Their bodies were found on a ranch in Tamaulipas State, north-eastern Mexico; they had been shot dead. Besides serving to prevent migrants entering into the United States, the purpose of the kidnappings is to obtain money from their relatives who are waiting for them there. This started in 2007, but was poorly organised; it was well known that migrants were being kidnapped but the mechanisms they nowadays use to carry out this type of kidnapping had not yet been established.

About two years ago, details of the terrible tragedy unfolded and became known. Members of organised crime gangs, with the reluctant consent of state agents, had been establishing contacts to carry out kidnappings and gruesome tortures to ensure that migrants supply phone numbers of their relatives in the U.S. These are then blackmailed to release the kidnap victim. This information has been obtained thanks to family members who have paid a ransom or to complaints made by victims who were released or somehow managed to escape and found protection in shelters and institutions specially organised to help them. Now we know that the police themselves were a tool used to “hook” migrants (they call “hitch” the person making the first contact between the kidnappers and migrants) and delivered them to the kidnappers. Mexican immigration agents often act as accomplices. Organised crime also forces some migrants to act as “recruiters” with the delusion that they will provide guidance to fellow migrants moving to the U.S., posing as “coyotes” or “boats” , but they are actually taken to the kidnapping gangs.

In Mexico, the railroad is no longer used to transport people. Migrants travel on freight trains, hidden inside or up on the roof. Organised crime members agree with train drivers to take migrants with them and let them get off where vehicles are waiting for them. They are taken to “safe houses” (where up to 300 people remain locked up) where they are tortured into supplying phone numbers of relatives in the U.S. who are asked to pay an average of 3,500 dollars, but may be up to 8,000 dollars, per person. Sometimes 200 or 300 dollars are accepted if the family has no means to pay more. The regimes enforced in these “houses” represent true slavery: women are forced to cook small rations of food for male and female hostages, women are constantly raped, and men do cleaning tasks and forced labour.

There are probably qualified medical staff available in those “houses”. Some of the migrants, who have no family in the US, are made to pay by the removal of a kidney, which is then sold in the market for organ trafficking. The same thing happens with pregnant women: they sell the newborn baby. They even dismember people while they are alive. They gradually cut off body parts until they are beheaded. They do it in the presence of all the other people in the "safe house", in addition to torture and control them. This way, they get intimidated and end up “freely” giving up phone numbers of their friends or relatives in the U.S. Those who have no connections in the U.S. or simply refuse to deliver contact information are invited to join the criminal organization, offering them robust amounts of money as salary.

Causes of the tragedy
Forced migration is caused mainly by the global economic model of the free market, since states no longer have control money flow mechanisms. Within our system of production and consumption, the producer of goods and services primarily aimed to respond to consumer needs within the parameters of the consumer's quality of life. Since consumers are the workers, maintaining their purchasing power, through their salaries, used to be important. Within the economic model of the free market, the concept of service that keeps the balance between laws of supply and demand is missing.

State intervention becomes necessary to keep the balance between exchange value (value obtained by producers for providing goods and services) and the utility value (value that consumers obtain from the goods and services they have purchased). The idea of state intervention is to maintain the balance between supply and demand in the context of justice and law. The current economic model requires the state solely to protect large producers who (without any public control) have overstated the exchange value in order to swell the capital needed to stay in the game of the free market. This exaggeration in exchange value affects utility value as well, because when the spirit of service is missing, producers seek as much profit as possible, at the cost of the intention of consumer’s quality of life.

In their pursuit of exaggerated profit, producers of goods and services do not care about the quality of life of those who work for them; they do not care about fair wages. Producers want the state to keep wages low and facilitate reduction of employment benefits. Thus, workers are left with no chance of progress or any possibility of achieving a decent standard of living. States are obliged to “deregulate” fiscal controls (having no tax regulation) so that capital can multiply. This deregulation not only entails tax exemptions for which investors must pay, but also the loss of public control over capital gains in the speculative market (before the New York Stock Exchange crisis, this used to be an absolute principle, now they are trying to correct the situation using state measures that are still very weak).

Within this economic model, human beings and their needs come second, becoming only tools that help a few families in the world increase their wealth. Countries with weaker economies are the ones more severely tempted to impose deregulation of their fiscal controls. They control neither foreign nor domestic investment capital and policies of privatisation are imposed on them, so that services normally provided by the state are taken over by large private companies. I believe that in this way political systems which should care for the integral development their population, are at the service of those who gain by the economic system. This is unfair, because the social responsibility of the state is reduced to a minimum. In this situation, many people are driven to forced migration, not only in the search for a job, but for more decently paid work and a better quality of life.

In addition to money flow mechanisms at an international level (with no control from the state) there are illegal flows generated by organised crime. The global economic model maintains conditions that allow these illegal flows of money to be laundered into legal money, with which criminal organisations buy weapons that are more powerful than those used by the police and armies of many nations. They can also corrupt security forces, politicians, public officials, business and operators in financial centres. With laundered money they hire young people as assassins and gangsters, because many youngsters have no offer of honest work.

Everything is against Central and South American migrants, fostering a climate of terror and suffering on their transit through Mexico. They walk in the hope of achieving what has been called the “American Dream”, that is, going to seek a better life for themselves and their families in the U.S. Even when we consider it a tragedy that they cannot find a decent life in their own countries, the suffering they face in the hands of organised crime and a whole system of oppression during their migration is an even worse tragedy.

Tackling the tragedy
Those aspects of our laws that criminalise migrants have disappeared. Until recently it was considered a crime to enter Mexico without proper admission requirements. After a legal reform it turned out to be just an administrative transgression. Various civil society organisations are working on creating a document that certifies immigration status in order to protect migrants during their passage. Mexico has signed international agreements assuming the responsibility to protect the human rights of migrants who illegally enter its territory. Only in this way we can avoid the position of helplessness into which migrants are forced when crossing our country.

Migrants in Mexico face very dangerous conditions when using trains. They have to get on and off trains when they are actually moving, then find a place to travel by walking on the roofs, moving from carriage to carriage, at great personal risk. Often they fall onto the train tracks and suffer injuries, get mutilated by wheels, or even die. Because they do not have legal identification cards and thus can be arrested and deported to their countries of origin, they transit on foot through isolated places, through forests, jungles, mountains and deserts, which not only expose them to the dangers of dehydration and disease, but also of assaults and robberies, in which some of them are killed and most women sexually abused. Facing continuous complaints for violations of human rights against migrants, the Mexican government created a temporary visa, which allows migrants who have been victims of such violations to remain in Mexico while perpetrators are prosecuted. They have even access to work. Unfortunately, even though those visas are granted and victims protected, no trials are conducted and no damages are received by injured persons. This visa represents a bureaucratic procedure that aims to portray Mexico as a defender of human rights of migrants, but it does not provide real protection.

To prevent further violations of migrant’s rights it is necessary to change public immigration policies. The Mexican government should stop attempting to manage migration flows by acting as a retaining wall for migrants attempting to reach the U.S. By continuing to do this Mexico will not defend rights; rather it will continue to feed the culture of human rights violations and impunity and being an accomplice in these crimes. There are people in Mexico asking migrants for immigration papers without being authorised by law to do so. They do it only out of the suspicion that a person may be foreigner. Punishment for those actions is urgent. The only officials authorised to require documents to prove legal presence in Mexico are officials of the National Migration Institute. The Mexican government is responsible for human rights violations when implicitly collaborating with this “containment” policy aimed at preventing Mexican, Central and South American migrants from “reaching the United States”.

A complaint was presented at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for kidnapping and other violations against the human rights of migrants passing through Mexico. In March this year information on this grave “humanitarian tragedy” was reported during a thematic hearing at the Commission, where the Mexican Government and immigration officers were denounced for being accomplices in the kidnappings, extortion and murders. There was no reaction, answer, or denial from the Mexican authorities who were present. The Mexican state is accused of violating international covenants that ensure the security of any person in its territory, thus strong condemnation by the international community is needed.

Let Us Become a Servant of the Lord, Helping One Another

For Anyone Who Is Fearful

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