In a Monday letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the human rights group Human Rights Watch called on the Obama administration not to release tens of millions of dollars of drug war aid under the Mérida Initiative to Mexico. The letter says the aid should be blocked unless and until Mexico allows soldiers accused of human rights abuses in the drug war there to be tried in civilian -- not military -- courts.

[inline:ricardo-murillo.jpg align=left caption="poster of assassinated human rights advocate Ricardo Murillo"]Under the Mérida Initiative, designed to support Mexican President Felipe Calderón in his effort to suppress the country's powerful and violent drug trafficking organizations, the so-called cartels, the US is providing $1.4 billion over three years. But under the terms of the enabling legislation, the US government must withhold 15% of the aid unless the State Department certifies that Mexico is meeting certain human rights conditions. One of them is that civilian authorities investigate and prosecute abuses committed by troops and federal police "in accordance with Mexican and international law." The amount in question this year is about $100 million.

Calderón has enlisted the Mexican armed forces into his war against the cartels, and some 45,000 troops have been deployed to violence-wracked cities and drug producing regions in a bid to clamp down on traffickers. But at the same time, complaints of human rights violations by the military -- from unlawful entry and theft to kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder -- have been on the increase. The Human Rights Watch letter referred to a "rapidly growing number of serious abuses."

Of course, the Mexican military is not the only player engaged in behavior that violates human rights. More than 12,000 people have been killed in Calderon's war, most of them members of the various cartels killed by rival traffickers, often after having been kidnapped and tortured. Hundreds of Mexican and police have also been killed by the traffickers, including at least 12 federal police officers kidnapped, tortured, and killed, their bodies left beside a road in Michoacán over the weekend.

The State Department's certification (or not) of Mexico as complying with Mérida Initiative human rights conditions is due later this summer.