Tita Radilla © PBI Mexico

Tita Radilla receives an award in London for a lifetime of dedication and work for human rights in Mexico

• Peace Brigades International and The Alliance for Lawyers at Risk grant an award to Tita Radilla for her relentless struggle for human rights.
• In Mexico, the judgment from the Inter-American Court is still not properly implemented after two years it was issued.

London, November 21, 2011.- As part of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of Peace Brigades International, together with The Alliance for Lawyers at Risk, awarded Tita Radilla Martinez in recognition for her bravery and commitment to the defense of human rights in Mexico, during a gala event at the Middle Temple, home of one of the most prestigious law schools in the UK.

PBI and The Alliance for Lawyers at Risk are honored to grant this award to a lifetime dedicated to the defense of human rights. Tita Radilla, together with relatives of other disappeared persons, gathered at the Association of Relatives of Disappeared and Victims of Human Rights Violations (AFADEM) have worked courageously for more than 30 years demanding justice for the victims of enforced disappearance in Mexico.

Due to her work, Ms. Radilla has been subjected to various threats and harassment. Therefore, since 2003, PBI has accompanied her, seeking to minimize the danger and help to maintain her work as a human rights defender.

PBI is extremely concerned about deficiencies from the State in complying with the ruling of the Inter-American Court. In particular, we regret the way in which the Mexican government conducted the public act of acknowledgment of responsibility for the human rights violations arising from the Radilla case, celebrating it without the presence of the victims or relatives of others who were as well disappeared.

In this regard, Tita Radilla said that “the State lost an opportunity to recognize the victims of the ‘dirty war’ and reconstruct the social fabric in the state of Guerrero, where the State committed crimes against humanity that particularly affected our town of Atoyac de Alvarez, a town that registered over 630 cases of enforced disappearance”.

PBI calls on the Mexican authorities to assure the dialogue with the victims and their relatives while complying with the rulings from the Inter-American Court as an expression of their commitment to human rights, particularly with the obligations undertaken before the Inter-American Court.