The Worker Support Center (CAT: Centro de Apoyo al Trabajador) in Mexico was forced to close its office after a threat assessment that showed that the safety and security of its employees was increasingly at risk. The decision was made because of ongoing threats received by staff following the kidnapping and torture of human rights defender Enrique Morales Montaño on May 15. Even after obtaining a grant in 2011 from the National Commission of Human Rights and the Puebla State Commission of Human Rights to receive protection, no headway was made in investigating the threats.

The Mexican mineworkers union, Los Mineros, together with national and international human rights groups including ProDESC, the UN Office for the High Commission on Human Rights, and Amnesty International, have called on the Mexican federal government to protect human rights defenders. Lorraine Clewer, Solidarity Center country program director in Mexico, says that the “systematic campaign against worker rights defenders must end—and the only way that will be done is if the Mexican government opens an investigation into the kidnapping, the break-in, and death threats and brings these violent and dangerous perpetrators to justice.”

Visit the organization’s website here: http://catpuebla.org/

For more information, read Solidarity Center’s statement here: http://bit.ly/LLA2IM