Don’t ask won’t tell – US repression of Human Rights Activist

Special to The Narco News Bulletin
By Erin Rosa – July 26, 2011

US Officials Say They Won’t Give a Reason for Blocking Mexican Human Rights Defender’s Flight
When Asked About the Incident, Transportation Security Administration Agency Cites ‘Security’ Matters

Mexican mathematician and human rights defender Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar was blocked from traveling from her home country to Europe by the US government, according to a brief statement from the country’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agency. However, the TSA and other government agencies won’t say why Gutiérrez Aguilar, an internationally respected author and analyst of social movements, was stopped mid-flight and barred from crossing into US airspace.

“The United States has the authority to deny access to US airspace. For security reasons, we will not discuss the details surrounding when or why access is denied,” the TSA told Narco News in a statement. The agency wouldn’t disclose anymore information about the incident. The US Embassy in Mexico City directed questions to the TSA.

On July 20, Gutiérrez Aguilar boarded a Aeroméxico flight from Mexico City to Barcelona, for a connecting flight to Rome, Italy. In the early dawn hours of July 21, the flight was forced to land in the Mexican city of Monterrey because it had been denied passage into US airspace, according to passenger Gutiérrez Aguilar. She wrote an open letter after the incident, stating that, “The flight was going normally until a little after midnight when the captain said that we would be returning to Monterrey because US airspace had been closed off.”

After the flight landed, Gutiérrez Aguilar said that, “To my major surprise, when we landed in the city a little past one in the morning on July 21, a flight attendant approached me and asked for me to show identification. I showed it without any problems. I had my voter card and my National Autonomous University of Mexico credentials with me. Once she saw my name she asked me to collect my things and accompany her to the door of the airplane. When I got to the door of the plane with all of my luggage there were a few Mexican federal police and two or three employees of Aeroméxico that asked me to identify myself again and to leave the plane. I told them I was not leaving until they explained to me what was going on. They said that the United States government had refused the plane because I was on it.”

Gutiérrez Aguilar was arrested, tortured and imprisoned in Bolivia in 1992. She was accused of belonging to a guerrilla organization, but all charges were dropped in 2007 and she has not been charged with any crime since that arrest. She came back to Mexico ten years ago, and since then she has been invited to speak at conferences at universities from around the world, traveling without any problems until now. She had been invited to speak in Italy on Latin American social movements.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees and regulates air transportation in the United States, referred questions about the possibility that Gutiérrez Aguilar was on a “no-fly list” to the TSA. When the US Department of Defense was asked about the incident, media representative Robert Ditchey denied involvement and said, “I have nothing for you. It would be inappropriate for the department to comment.” …more