President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is right that everyone’s life must be protected, including criminals, Eunice Rendón and Javier Oliva, security experts, agreed.
Although they are criminals, due process and the law must be followed to respect human rights,” said Oliva.
By law and international conventions, he explained, “soldiers cannot open fire. They are there to repel the attack.”
Regarding the video that circulated on social networks in which the persecution of military vehicles by armed criminals is seen in Michoacán, he commented that “what was involved was a provocation with foul language, asking them to shoot them. In fact, criminals are wicked. They say shoot at us, shoot at us, but they don’t dare to shoot because they know that as soon as they do, they’ll get there”.
The military “cannot take the initiative to attack a criminal, even if they are in front of them,” he added, recalling other scenes of soldiers and sailors being humiliated by armed civilians.
From his perspective, solving the problem of security and fighting crime is “of laws, political will, budget, legal design. What is needed is the structural approach”, and he suggested “start by (training) the local police”.
Paradox
For Rendón, the paradox is, he said, that the president “says that life must be taken care of and that it is good that the soldiers do not get involved in confrontations, but at the same time he militarized security.”
The military is trained for war and that is why there have been unfortunate deaths, he said, such as the recent case of the university students killed by the National Guard by mistake, or the one in Chihuahua, when there was a water problem, “who also killed civilians. for following war protocols.
“The president is absolutely right, and that is why we should not have the military doing public security. It is proven at the international level that conflicts in which the military are related, such as this type of persecution (of soldiers by criminals), are much more lethal because they are basically trained to kill.
Yesterday López Obrador affirmed that currently “we take care of the elements of the Armed Forces, of the Defense, of the National Guard, but we also take care of the members of the gangs; they are human beings.”
The fatality rate, he said, records that, in 2011, during the government of former President Felipe Calderón, 1,412 civilians died, while in 2020 there were 212, and until January 1, there were 87.
During 2011, during Felipe Calderón’s six-year term, the highest number of civilians killed by the military was recorded, with 1,412 cases, assured President López Obrador.