Lydia Cacho

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lydia Cacho Ribeiro (born Mexico City, 12 April 1963) is a Mexican journalist and feminist and human rights activist. She is a member of the Red Internacional de Periodistas con Visión de Género.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Lydia Cacho Ribeiro was born to a mother of Portuguese and French origin who moved from France to Mexico during World War II and then married a military mechanical engineer. Cacho herself met a foreigner and then settled in Cancún, Quintana Roo, in 1985. She began working for the cultural section of the newspaper Novedades de Cancún and a decade later wrote articles about the prostitution of Cuban and Argentine girls in the city. In 2003, Cacho wrote articles on the sexual abuse of minors for the newspaper Por Esto including a note on a girl abused by a local hotel owner. ("A bote pronto: Lydia Cacho, periodista", Life & Style, November 2006, #27).

[edit] Los Demonios del Edén

Cacho then wrote the book Los Demonios del Edén (Demons of Eden) in which she accuses Jean Succar Kuri of being involved in a ring of child pornography and prostitution, based on official statements from his alleged victims and even a video of him (filmed with hidden camera). The book mentions important politicians as Emilio Gamboa Patrón and Miguel Ángel Yunes as involved, and mentioned Kamel Nacif Borge, a Puebla businessman, of protecting Succar Kuri.

Nacif Borge sued Cacho for defamation in Puebla, and a group of policemen of the state illegally arrested her in Quintana Roo and extradited her from one state to another. She said she didn't know the reason for her arrest since she hadn't received a subpoena before. She paid a fine and was freed.

On February 14, 2006, several telephone conversations between Nacif Borge and Mario Marín, governor of the state of Puebla, were revealed by the Mexico City daily La Jornada, creating a media frenzy. In these conversations, before Cacho's arrest, Marín and Nacif Borge discussed putting Cacho in jail as a favour, and having her beaten and abused while in jail to silence her.[1][2]

On 29 November 2007, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 4 that Marín had no case to answer in Cacho's arrest, jailing and harassment,[3] after which the United Nations Human Rights Council advised her to leave the country and offered her political asylum, legal assistance, and access to international courts.[4][5]

While being held, Cacho was granted the Premio Francisco Ojeda al Valor Periodístico (Francisco Ojeda Award for Journalistic Courage).[6]

By May 2006, Cacho had taken the cause of the unsolved murders in Ciudad Juárez as a call to action against impunity of abuse of women in Mexico. What is an ongoing horror abroad, the chronic discovery of murdered women whose corpses are discovered in repeated patterns of abuse, rape, mutilation and are discarded as offal in pathetic scenes in the desert and urban surroundings of Ciudad Juárez. Young women from factories are said to be helpless in their need for public transportation. This is a common pattern for these women's deaths.

She received the 2007 Amnesty International Ginetta Sagan Award for Women and Children's Rights [7] and, in 2008, the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.[8]

[edit] See also

[edit] Publications

  • Los Demonios del Edén (2005) Paperback: 224 p. Grijalbo Mondadori, ISBN 968-5957-58-4. México.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ ''Mi gober, tú eres el héroe'': Kamel Nacif a Mario Marín La Jornada,, 14 February 2006
  2. ^ Exige PRD renuncia a gobernador por caso Lidia Cacho El Universal, 14 February 2006
  3. ^ Mexican Court Finds No Violation of Rights in Jailing of Journalist, New York Times, 30 November 2007.
  4. ^ ONU aconseja a Cacho dejar México El Universal, 16 February 2008.
  5. ^ Revela Lydia Cacho: La ONU le recomendó abandonar el país
  6. ^ Premio al valor periodístico para Lydia Cacho
  7. ^ 2007 Recipient of the Ginetta Sagan Award
  8. ^ 2008 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize awarded to Mexican reporter Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, UNESCO, 9 April 2008.