Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Sunday the state had in the past been the main violator of human rights in the country, as he blamed violence and disappearances on his predecessors' "neo-liberal" economic policies.
"There was a time in which the main violator of human rights was the state. It was the violator par excellence of human rights. That's over," Lopez Obrador said at an event in which his government set out plans to end disappearances in Mexico.
"I, as president, and at the same time as commander of the country's armed forces, will never give the order to massacre, to repress the people of Mexico," he said.