WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st October, 2019) The kidnapping and torture of US-bound migrants at the hands of criminals dramatically rose in south Mexico since authorities began implementing stricter immigration policies, a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) official said in a press release.
"What we are seeing is an exponential growth in the number of kidnappings in this area and an increase in the cruelty and the torture methods used by criminal groups operating in this area," Gemma Pomares, MSF's head of medical activities in the Mexican city of Tenosique, said on Wednesday.
The Mexican government's policies to crack down on the migration issue, the release added, is forcing migrants to take risky and dangerous routes to the United States which is exposing these migrants to criminal gangs that operate particularly on the route from Guatemala to Tenosique.
Within the last month alone, according to the release, the team in Tenosique treated eleven migrants who were kidnapped and tortured which equals the total number of cases seen in the first eight months of this year in the same town.
Victims reported being taken to abandoned houses where they were forced to undress then tied up for hours and left outside in high temperatures and inclement weather in order to force them to provide phone numbers to their relatives with the intention of extortion.
Some of the victims had gunshot and knife wounds while others were victims of sexual assault, the release said. Some migrants were tortured by electric shocks to their genitals and anus while others were forced to watch their companies being raped, according to the release. Pomares said this violence was usually seen more in dangerous Mexican cities near the US border.
The Trump administration pressured Mexico earlier this year to intensify efforts to counter illegal migration. In exchange, the White House eased trade tariffs on Mexican imports to the United States.
