President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked for evidence from UN Committee against Enforced Disappearance, who after concluding his visit to Mexico said that he had verified that a generalized situation of disappearances in a large part of the national territory, in front of which the impunity and the revictimización.
During his morning conference, which on this occasion was held at the Palacio del Mexico City City Council, the president said that during his government work has been done – as never before – of search for missing persons and they are prevented from continuing to happen. For this reason, he said that if the UN presents evidence that the disappearance of people continues, his government will apply.
“We are working; a mechanism for the search was created. In this government, an extraordinary search work has been done like never before, and forced disappearances are prevented. If the UN says otherwise, it would have to present the evidence and we apply ourselves. Now it is not the same as before, as a corrupt and authoritarian regime prevailing, the idea that we are the same remained. No. There is no longer the: kill them hot. There are no massacres, the people are not repressed, there is no impunity, zero impunity, ”he said.
López Obrador reiterated his government’s offer to continue receiving experts from international organizations to verify respect for human rights in the country, as he said that nothing is hidden. He even expressed that if he had made commitments with organized crime groups or business, they would now be asking to receive rewards.
“The country was closed. (…) We opened the country because we have nothing to look at. Human rights organizations from the UN and from any international organization can come and supervise and scrutinize, and we are pending, because there is no link of complicity with organized crime or white-collar crime; that’s why zero corruption, zero impunity. If they had given us money from organized crime, or the machuchones, the so-called businessmen, we would not be able to do anything, ”he said.
President López Obrador said he will ask the Undersecretary of Human Rights, Alejandro Encinas, to report on this issue.
In Mexico, according to the National Commission for the Search of Disappeared Persons, dependent on the Interior Ministry, from February 8, 2019 to October 4 of this year, it has carried out 2,103 search days in 28 states and 307 municipalities of the country to try to locate indications of 94,426 people not located. This last number, according to Amnesty International, keeps Mexico at the head of the American continent in the number of missing persons.
During its recent visit to Mexico, from November 15 to 26, 2021, the UN Committee against Forced Disappearance, made up of 10 independent experts, supervised the application and compliance with Article 33 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Women. People Against Forced Disappearances.
The Committee highlighted the importance of Mexico accepting the visit, which is a clear expression of the State’s openness to scrutiny and international support.
Some of the 10 experts were Juan Pablo Albán Alencastro; Juan José López Ortega; Horacio Ravenna and Carmen Rosa Villa Quintana, who will present a report to the plenary of the Committee during its 22nd Period of Sessions, which will take place in Geneva between March 28 and April 8, 2022.
In this framework, 13 entities of our country visited: Chihuahua, Mexico City, Coahuila, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Jalisco, State of Mexico, Morelos, Nayarit, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Veracruz, where they held 48 meetings with more than 80 authorities, and 33 meetings with hundreds of victims, and dozens of victims’ groups and civil society organizations from almost all states.
The Committee monitored exhumations and search sessions in the states of Morelos, Coahuila and the State of Mexico. They also visited the Human Identification Center of Coahuila, and several federal, state and migrant deprivation of liberty centers, in order to verify official records and compliance with the obligations contained in the Convention.
The experts analyzed the legislative and institutional advances produced in the past years, such as the General Law on Forced Disappearance of Persons, Disappearance Committed by Individuals and from National Person Search System, as well as the General Victims Law.
They recognized the adoption in Mexico of the Homologated Search Protocol and the Additional Protocol for the Search of Boys, Girls and Adolescents, as well as the establishment of search commissions at the state level, the National Registry of Missing and Non-Localized Persons, the Extraordinary Forensic Identification Mechanism (MEIF), and the Regional Center for Human Identification in Coahuila.
Also the creation of the Commission for Access to Truth, Historical Clarification and the Promoting Justice for serious Human Rights violations committed between the years 1965–1990; the creation of the Transnational Mechanism of Access to Justice for Migrants and the Search Desk for Missing Migrants within the National Search System.
However, the foregoing, “we regret to note that a generalized situation of disappearances continues in a large part of the State’s territory, in the face of which, as we have been pointing out since 2015, impunity and re-victimization prevail,” he said. Carmen Rosa Villa Quintana.
He said that although the Mexican authorities reported a reduction in the number of records of disappeared persons, “we cannot obviate the need for Mexico to adopt a national prevention policy to eradicate disappearance, which involves all authorities, and makes effective the rights of victims to truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition. It is not just about the victims, since forced disappearance is a problem for everyone, for Mexican society as a whole and for humanity as a whole ”.
He mentioned that during the visit, “we received worrying information, both from authorities and victims, about the existence of various patterns in the commission of forced disappearances in different regions of the country, which operate simultaneously and reveal scenarios of collusion between state agents and The orginazed crime. Added to this are the forced disappearances committed directly by State agents ”.
He indicated that the Committee also noted with concern that several of the recommendations made by that Committee to Mexico in 2015 and 2018 are still pending implementation.
In this sense, he said, “we emphasize that disappearances are not only a phenomenon of the past. On the contrary, we regret to note that it still persists. According to official figures, as of today, the National Registry of Missing Persons and not located indicates a figure of 95,121 missing persons, of which more than a hundred would have been committed during our stay. At the same time, the effort to keep the aforementioned registry updated allows us to get closer to the real dimension of the problem of disappearances in Mexico ”.
The Committee emphasized the still unsolved cases of the massacres of San fernando, Cadereyta and Camargo, and said he had information on people who recently started their migration route and ended up in clandestine graves, and on others who are illegally deprived of their liberty without communication with the outside world, which would make them missing persons.
“They were taken alive, we want them alive,” the victims repeat insistently. The search in life is a priority task. There are several action protocols, in particular the Homologated Search Protocol. This protocol is a model instrument, but its effectiveness still requires its proper implementation. For this reason, we would like to highlight the importance of combining all efforts to properly use the tools provided by said protocol, a fundamental instrument to clarify the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared people, ”Carmen Rosa Villa Quintana mentioned.
Finally, he commented that for the UN Committee, the fight against impunity in Mexico cannot be postponed.
“As we all know, and as the Committee has already highlighted in its concluding observations and also other international and regional human rights mechanisms, impunity is almost absolute. It is a structural impunity that favors the reproduction and concealment of enforced disappearances. As one victim told us: “Human beings live by faith and hope, but with injustice, their soul never rests,” said Villa Quintana.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx