impunidad
Osmán Iván: victim of torture, arbitrary detention, and institutional racism
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico
December 3, 2025
Bulletin No. 10
Osmán Iván: victim of torture, arbitrary detention, and institutional racism
• 15 years of injustice—freedom cannot wait.
Osmán Iván Rubio Bonilla, a Honduran citizen unjustly accused in three case files by the Chiapas State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) and a survivor of torture, was acquitted of homicide on November 4, 2025, after 14 years and 6 months of tireless resistance. However, he remains deprived of his liberty at the State Center for Social Reintegration No. 7 (CERSS) in Tapachula. The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) call on the Judicial Branch of Chiapas to reverse the systematic violations of his human rights and order his immediate release.
Osmán Iván was detained on May 2, 2011, in Huixtla, Chiapas, during an operation carried out by the Municipal Police, the State Preventive Police (PEP), and the State Border Police (PEF), without an arrest warrant and under circumstances that constitute arbitrary detention and torture.
According to his testimony, during the arrest he was blindfolded, bound, beaten, asphyxiated with water, subjected to electric shocks, sensory deprivation, and physical and psychological abuse, until he was forced to incriminate himself in various crimes. These assaults were documented by the State Human Rights Commission (CEDH), which recorded injuries consistent with torture and issued Recommendation 013/2020-R in 2020, rejected by the FGE and the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSyPC).
The three criminal proceedings against him stem from statements obtained under coercion:
- Attempted Illegal Deprivation of Liberty and Organized Crime (criminal case 177/2023): has remained in the evidentiary stage for over 13 years, without the Criminal Court of the Tapachula Judicial District issuing a ruling.
- Aggravated Homicide (criminal case 423/2023): a sentence was issued in 2023 based on ministerial confessions and testimonies that did not identify him; overturned in 2024 to investigate the reported torture. On November 4, 2025, he was finally acquitted.
- Carrying a firearm without a license: a federal case in which he was acquitted in 2014.
Frayba’s documentation reveals systematic irregularities: fabrication of evidence, contradictions in police reports, manipulated expert examinations, and prosecutorial actions that ignored early reports of torture. The CEDH confirmed that the arrest did not occur at the location of the alleged kidnapping and that there was no direct identification by the complainant, ruling out the flagrancy invoked by authorities.
After nearly 15 years in prison, Osmán Iván faces a process marked by violations of due process, racism, lack of consular assistance, absence of effective investigation, and unjustified delays that keep him in prolonged pretrial detention, contrary to international standards. In the face of impunity sustained by the Mexican State, Frayba and OMCT filed a complaint in August 2024 before the UN Human Rights Committee, registered in April 2025 under number 4740/2025, still pending resolution.
Frayba and OMCT urgently call on state and federal authorities to ensure a thorough and impartial investigation into the reported torture. In addition, we demand guarantees for access to justice and reparation for the violations committed against Osmán Iván Rubio Bonilla, beginning with his unconditional release.
The case of Osmán Iván Rubio Bonilla is a symbol of institutional violence and racism that permeates the justice system in Mexico. His freedom is not a concession—it is a right taken from him through torture and arbitrariness. Every day he remains imprisoned prolongs injustice and impunity.
We demand his immediate and unconditional release. The dignity of Osmán Iván, and of all survivors of torture and arbitrary detention, cannot be kept waiting any longer.
Report from the First Civil Observation Mission in Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca, identifies crimes against humanity, ethnocide, and ecocide committed against the community
Presented on Saturday, November 29 to the community of Eloxochitlán in Spanish and Enna (the Mazatec language). The report is the result of the Observation Mission carried out in July of this year by an interdisciplinary group.
It concludes that the community is the victim of crimes against humanity which, being systematic and prolonged for a decade, constitute a case of ethnocide aimed at destroying the forms of organization and life of this Mazatec community. The ethnocide of the community of Eloxochitlán seeks to undermine community resistance to extractivist activities that have caused the ecocide of the Xangá Ndá Ge River and the destruction of the community’s right to self-determination:
– In this regard, arbitrary detentions, prolonged pre-trial imprisonment, political criminalization, forced displacement and ethnocide, as well as gender-based violence, were detected.
– Regarding the plundering of the Xangá Ndá Ge River, hydrological alterations, contaminating agents, and desiccation were identified, in addition to damage to flora and fauna.
This compilation of documentation seeks to be taken to international bodies, as it argues that there are no legal conditions in place to guarantee the protection of the community’s rights. Acts of aggression, political persecution and criminalization have resulted in 50 direct victims and at least 500 indirect ones.
The documentation collected identifies governors, agency heads, and magistrates as responsible actors, who—with the backing and complicity of the State—have contributed to the denial of justice, persecution, and fabrication of case files.
Likewise, it states that the Huautla Court bears the greatest responsibility by allowing omissions and practices that favor local strongmen, as it has rejected acts of torture substantiated under the Istanbul Protocol, obstructed legal processes, criminalized community authorities, carried out arbitrary detentions, and manipulated testimonies.
Through a timeline of events, the report describes the process of aggression the Mazatec community has endured, including military intervention, intimidation, torture, dispossession, home raids, threats, and abuses of authority. Many of these forms of violence predate 2014, as multiple formal complaints had been filed since 2011, none of which advanced due to omissions by the Huautla court.
In recent weeks, Oaxaca governor Salomón Jara has labeled Eloxochitlán a “red zone,” attempting to portray it as a violent community—a smear strategy taking advantage of his authority and media reach to support the strongman Manuel Cepeda in the municipal elections of November 23, where he received the second-highest number of votes.
The presentation also served as a space for community reflection, where a message was directed at those who continue to push the narrative of “a conflict between two families,” a simplification of the severe attacks carried out in complicity with the three levels of government. They responded that Eloxochitlán is made up of many families with different surnames, a small town where it is common to share last names.
Many women, as shown in the Radio Zapote broadcast that day, stated their last names. Those who spoke were mothers, wives, and sisters of former political prisoners and persecuted individuals since 2014, who had to leave their homes to dedicate themselves to the struggle for their relatives’ freedom—working the land those relatives once worked to feed their children, sleeping on the streets during sit-ins such as the one maintained for over two years outside the Supreme Court of Justice in Mexico City, while waiting for the justices to take up the case.
The report concludes that, given the incompetence of the Mexican justice system in guaranteeing minimum conditions of safety, justice, and respect for the human rights of the persecuted community of Eloxochitlán, the case must be brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), and calls for precautionary measures for all persons at risk, as well as specific protective measures for indirect victims.
The preparation of this report marks an important precedent in the forms of resistance against State injustices and violations toward Indigenous peoples. The Mazatec women comrades are an example of how to confront impunity and criminalization; their struggle for freedom has been arduous and is not yet over.
As they have done in recent years, the Mazatec women for freedom again extend their invitation to the “Internationalist Faena to End Criminalization,” which will take place from December 3 to 4, 2025, in Mexico City in front of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, and on December 3, 4, and 5 outside UN Women at Calzada General Mariano Escobedo 526, Anzures neighborhood, Miguel Hidalgo.










