CAT/C/75 page 61 286. The consideration of these recommendations and the definition of action to give effect to them will thus be a contribution to the formulation of the human rights policy to which the Government of Mexico has committed itself and, in particular, to a review of the action which must be taken to combat torture. 287. The importance that Mexico attaches to the Committee’s work is also reflected in its recent recognition of the Committee’s competence to consider communications and in its support for the adoption of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, which allows visits to detention centres. 288. Despite the foregoing, some legal considerations which relate to the matters referred to in the Committee’s recommendations and whose purpose is to add to the information available to the Committee are submitted below. 289. It must be noted that the report refers to various circumstances that are closely connected with the amendments to articles 16 and 20 of the Constitution of the United Mexican States, published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 3 September 1993, as factors which explain the continued existence of the practice of torture in Mexico. 290. The amendment of those provisions of the Constitution was designed to strike a balance between the principles of security and liberty and was proposed for the benefit of society as a whole with a view to protecting human rights, individual guarantees and the effective administration of justice both during investigation and in judicial proceedings. It was also designed to create a context of civilized behaviour by implicitly stating that the Mexican system of criminal justice is based on the guarantees provided for in the Constitution and the requirement that the public prosecutor and the judge cannot and must not go beyond what the legal system allows them. 291. At present, however, the Government of Mexico is reviewing possibilities of changing the system of the administration of justice, during which the points made in the Committee’s report will be taken into account. 292. Mexico is determined to eradicate torture and to take the necessary measures to achieve this objective. It agrees with the Committee that the problem of torture cannot be regarded as being systematic in nature, i.e. as a practice which has the consent or acquiescence of the authorities. 293. With regard to the reference in paragraph 217 of the report to a lack of awareness of cases of torture, during the Committee’s meeting with the judiciary the existence of cases of “torment” was mentioned merely as a possibility; it was not asserted as a fact because it could not be. 294. The existence of cases of torment at the Federal level was also mentioned as a hypothetical possibility.