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Court in the state of Chiapas, in southern Mexico, sentenced two armed forces officers to serve heavy prison sentences for femicide, the state attorney general's office announced yesterday, Friday. The victim was a female military officer. In addition to the prison sentences, the court ordered the two land army captains to pay a fine of nearly 520,000 pesos (over 22.200 euros) for the murder of the 28-year-old woman in April 2019, according to the attorney general's office.
The definition of femicide in Mexican law is homicide with a female victim due to gender violence. Femicides increased at an alarming rate in the last years of the previous government and the number has continued to rise, albeit at a much slower pace, under President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The two officers convicted were named by the prosecution as Jose Antonio N. and Agustín N, in accordance with the usual practice of the Mexican authorities to publish only the initials of the defendants' surnames. Convictions of military personnel are extremely rare in Mexico, where the armed forces are seen as a pillar of the system.
"It is very unusual to see convictions of members of the military for human rights issues," noted Raul Benitez, a security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). And "it's even more unusual if we're talking about femicides,"
The armed forces have been given even more responsibility since centre-left President Lopez Obrador took office in December 2018, promising to tackle the wave of violence that has been gigantic in Mexico in recent years. But he has struggled to register any tangible progress on this front.
Critics of government policy argue that the military has systematically gone unpunished by the justice system for the massive human rights violations attributed to its members, particularly those committed since former President Felipe Calderón deployed the armed forces inside the country to crack down on powerful drug cartels fifteen years ago.
The current government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador denies this, recalling that it has pledged that all those who commit crimes will be held accountable.
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