Six years after being shot, beaten, and tortured by municipal police officers in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, Ángel Daniel Bautista Vásquez received a public apology from the Mexican State this Friday, in an event held at the Secretariat of the Interior (Segob) in compliance with a ruling by the United Nations (UN) Committee against Torture.
“Let this not remain an empty speech,” Bautista Vásquez, a torture survivor, urged as he spoke in the Juárez Hall of the government agency. Originally from the Mixtec community of Tlaxiaco, Bautista said that the demand for justice is not only for himself or his family, but for everyone who has been a victim of torture at the hands of public officials in the country. He stated that there are “countless complaints” of this crime that have not been addressed.
Undersecretary for Human Rights, Population and Migration Arturo Medina offered the apology on behalf of the Mexican State and acknowledged that institutions had an obligation to act with greater diligence, promptness, and effectiveness to clarify the facts and guarantee access to justice. He added that the government reiterates its commitment to preventing, investigating, punishing, and eradicating torture and any form of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
According to the Center for Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples Advisory (Cedhapi), the organization accompanying the victim, on March 21, 2020, Bautista Vásquez was assaulted by members of the Tlaxiaco Municipal Police outside his parents’ home in the San Nicolás neighborhood of the Oaxacan city. The officers beat him on the head, abdomen, chest, skull, legs, and right thigh, and shot him in the left leg and right femur. As a result, he currently has physical difficulties walking.
On April 11, 2025, the UN Committee against Torture urged the Mexican State to promptly and impartially complete the investigation, provide comprehensive reparations, and adopt measures to prevent similar incidents from happening again.
In the criminal proceedings, a Tlaxiaco control judge issued arrest warrants for municipal police officers Jorge Hilario Santiago and Melquiades Avendaño Sarabia, who were arrested on July 18, 2025. Six days later, a judge ordered that they be formally charged and placed in mandatory pretrial detention. The trial hearing remains pending.
Cedhapi warned in a statement that there is a risk that both police officers could be released and pointed to possible influence peddling, since the defendants’ legal defense was handled by Carlos Fernando Santiago Cruz, legal director of the Tlaxiaco municipal government. The organization stated that seven arrest warrants remain pending in the case.
Ricardo Neves, from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico, said during the ceremony that a sincere apology “is the opposite of putting a full stop to the past.”
Source: jornada
