MEXICO CITY: Mexican authorities fired a forensic official on Tuesday after an outcry over the storage of some 150 bodies in a refrigerated container truck that roamed towns in Jalisco state, where morgues are filled with victims of the country’s drug war. Killings in the western state, home to one of Mexico’s most violent and powerful drug gangs, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, have already hit a record 16,339 so far this year, and the national homicide rate is rising having already hit its highest in modern history last year.
Accusations that authorities in Jalisco were mishandling bodies flared last week after the semi-trailer truck with 150 corpses was spotted in a warehouse on the outskirts of Mexico’s second largest city Guadalajara, drawing the ire of the mayor of the borough, who said it was illegally parked.
It then turned up next to houses in a field further from the city, where neighbors complained it emitted a powerful stench.
Jalisco state spokesman Gonzalez Sanchez told local radio that Luis Octavio Cotero, who had headed the forensic institute since 2015, was dismissed because he failed to take responsibility for storing the bodies.
Cotero told Reuters that his agency was not responsible for storing the unclaimed bodies, and accused the government of making him a scapegoat after he questioned the findings of an investigation into the disappearance of three film students earlier this year.
“It’s bad political conduct. I feel sorry for the institute,” Cotero said, adding that state officials knew they needed more morgue space as much as two years ago.
“Only now are they looking around ... It’s inefficacy that has put our state in such a sorry position,” he said.
Cotero said another 100 bodies were being kept in a separate refrigerated truck parked at the forensic institute, and that the other truck had been forced to move for lack of parking space.
The state’s spokesman said an investigation has begun to sort out “numerous versions” of who gave orders to move the containers.
Mexico’s national human rights commission and its Jalisco branch on Tuesday called for a probe into the case, describing the local government’s treatment of the cadavers as “inhumane.”
Work on a new facility to hold 700 bodies is underway, the state’s general secretary Roberto Lopez told local media last week.
Mexican official fired over bodies stored in truck says he’s a scapegoat
Mexican official fired over bodies stored in truck says he’s a scapegoat
- 100 bodies were being kept in a separate refrigerated truck parked at the forensic institute
- Mexico’s national human rights commission and its Jalisco branch on Tuesday called for a probe into the case
Arts festival’s decision to exclude Palestinian author spurs boycott
- A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Abdel-Fattah responded saying it was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship,” with her lawyers issuing a letter to the festival
SYDENY: A top Australian arts festival has seen the withdrawal of dozens of writers in a backlash against its decision to bar an Australian Palestinian author after the Bondi Beach mass shooting, as moves to curb antisemitism spur free speech concerns.
The shooting which killed 15 people at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Dec. 14 sparked nationwide calls to tackle antisemitism. Police say the alleged gunmen were inspired by Daesh.
The Adelaide Festival board said last Thursday it would disinvite Randa Abdel-Fattah from February’s Writers Week in the state of South Australia because “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”
FASTFACTS
• Abdel-Fattah responded, saying it was ‘a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.’
• Around 50 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, leaving it in doubt, local media reported.
A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Abdel-Fattah responded saying it was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship,” with her lawyers issuing a letter to the festival.
Around 50 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, leaving it in doubt, local media reported.
Among the boycotting authors, Kathy Lette wrote on social media the decision to bar Abdel-Fattah “sends a divisive and plainly discriminatory message that platforming Australian Palestinians is ‘culturally insensitive.'”
The Adelaide Festival said in a statement on Monday that three board members and the chairperson had resigned. The festival’s executive director, Julian Hobba, said the arts body was “navigating a complex moment.”
a complex and unprecedented moment” after the “significant community response” to the board decision.
In the days after the Bondi Beach attack, Jewish community groups and the Israeli government criticized Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for failing to act on a rise in antisemitic attacks and criticized protest marches against Israel’s war in Gaza held since 2023.
Albanese said last week a Royal Commission will consider the events of the shooting as well as antisemitism and social cohesion in Australia. Albanese said on Monday he would recall parliament next week to pass tougher hate speech laws.
On Monday, New South Wales state premier Chris Minns announced new rules that would allow local councils to cut off power and water to illegally operating prayer halls.
Minns said the new rules were prompted by the difficulty in closing a prayer hall in Sydney linked to a cleric found by a court to have made statements intimidating Jewish Australians.
The mayor of the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield said the rules were ill-considered and councils should not be responsible for determining hate speech.
“Freedom of speech is something that should always be allowed, as long as it is done in a peaceful way,” Mayor Frank Carbone told Reuters.
