Witnesses from Mexico will testify today to Parliament’s International Human Rights Subcommittee about the missing students of Ayotzinapa, and call for overdue Canadian action

MEDIA ADVISORY

(Ottawa, April 28, 2015) The mother of one of 46 students from a teacher-training college in the Mexican community of Ayotzinapa who were killed or forcibly disappeared during a September 2014 attack by Mexican police and gunmen will testify before Parliament’s Subcommittee on International Human Rights this afternoon, along with a surviving student and a lawyer for the families of the victims.

Their goal is to make visible a disturbing pattern of grave abuses perpetrated by state security forces, and call for attention to serious failures on the part of government authorities to protect human rights in Mexico, a country that Canada has designated a so-called “safe country”.

The members of the Mexican delegation who will testify to Canadian MPs are:

• Hilda Legideño Vargas, whose son Jorge Antonio was forcibly disappeared in the September 2014 attack;

• Jorge Luis Clemente Balbuena, a student leader at the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college;

• Isidoro Vicario Aguilar, a Me’phaa indigenous lawyer with the Tlachinollan Human Rights Centre, an award-winning NGO that represents families affected by the September 2014 attack and a prior attack in December 2011, in which two other Ayotzinapa students were killed.

The three witnesses will testify to members of the MP Sub-committee on International Human Rights from 1 to 2 PM on Tuesday, April 28, 2015.

Their appearance before the Subcommittee follows a tour through BC, Ontario, and Quebec to raise awareness about the attack on the Ayotzinapa students and an ongoing climate of danger for those who speak up about human rights violations in Mexico.  The tour is supported by more than 50 organizations in Canada.

On March 24, 2015, people in Argentina remembered the military coup d’etat and the Ayotzinapa students

It was the State! Credit: RFelderlder

A progressive version of el Chavo Credit: RFelder

Photos of the 43 Ayotzinapa students Credit: RFelder

Message for Canadians and the international community from four Mexican human rights defenders

Briefing note on events related to disappearances in Mexico from February 5 to March 5, 2015

March 9, 2015. During the month of February, Mexico’s General Prosecutor’s Office (PGR) attempted to close the case of the 43 disappeared students of Ayotzinapa by arguing that, based on the testimonies from witnesses and evidence gathered in a landfill site in Cocula Guerrero, the students were incinerated by the criminal group Guerreros Unidos. The Argentine Forensic Team questioned this as they were not present during the collection of evidence in Cocula. The Forensic Team was also concerned about the possible manipulation of evidence in order to fit the PGR’s conclusions. Academics from Mexico’s National University also question the PGR’s argument and indicated that the physical evidence provided by the former contradicts the incineration argument. According to these experts, the burning of bone tissues requires special equipment, which was not available in the landfill site.

Nine days after the attacks against education students in Guerrero, 43 students are still missing. October 5th, 2014.

Nine days after the grave human rights violations against the students of the Rural Teacher Training School of Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero by police forces of the municipality of Iguala, 43 students are still missing after being detained by members of the local police. The three levels of government of the Mexican state have not fulfilled their obligation in the immediate search for the disappeared with due process and according to international standards.

Tlachinollan Centre, the Guerrero Network of Human Rights Organizations and the Human Rights Centre José Ma. Morelos y Pavón recognize the efforts by the parents of the disappeared students in initiating investigations regarding the disappearance of their loved ones. Yet, the reach of their efforts remains limited because they do not have the necessary resources. Official investigations continue to be ineffective because of the lack of intelligence work prior to the collection of the evidence in the crime scene and the absence of analysis of the information provided by arrested police officers and the pattern of the operations of organized crime in the region.

Tomorrow is the International Day of the Disappeared. Mexican families draw attention to the fate of their relatives

August 30th is the International Day of the Disappeared. This day raises awareness of the fate of individuals whose whereabouts is unknown to their relatives and/or legal representatives in cases of involuntary disappereances because of armed conflict or authoritarian regimes. In preparation for this day, different human rights organizations and families of the disappeared are carrying out different events tomorrow throughout Mexico. Please support the families by sending a twitter to Mexico’s president asking him to #findthedisappeared@PresidenciaMX

If the twitter messages come from abroad, you will giving the families a lot of support.

Briefing note. Discussion of the Declaration of Absence in Cases of Disappearance

The effects of the crisis on unemployment, wages and benefits have put Mexicans in a situation of economic insecurity. Disappearances complicate the economic circumstances of a victim’s family. The disappeared contributed with an important share of the household income through wages and social benefits such as health care and government housing assistance in the National Workers Housing Fund Institute (Instituto Nacional para el Fomento de la Vivienda de los Trabajadores or INFONAVIT). Families of the disappeared cannot receive any pension payments because the whereabouts of the victim is unknown, and therefore she or he cannot be declared dead. Also, the situation of uncertainty and worry for their loved ones has impacted families’ physical and emotional health. Health expenses therefore add to the costs of investigation and litigation in the absence of state authorities’ investigations in the context of economic and physical insecurity in the country.

If families want to retain social benefits and receive some form of pension, they have to apply for the presumption of death of the victim, which takes up to six year at least to complete. This impacts families emotionally because once the person is presumed dead, investigations end. Thus, families feel they betrayed their disappeared by having to choose access to basic services over looking for their missing relative.

FUUNDEC and Human Rights Centre Fray Juan de Larios: Statistics of Enforced Disappearance in Coahuila

Mexican families carry out their own investigations to find the disappeared

Mexican families carry out their own investigations to find the disappeared.

Press release from FUUNDEC: Three years of walking with dignity and pain in a tireless search

December 19, 2012  Saltillo, Coahuila

Three years ago we, who integrate the United Forces for our Disappeared in Coahuila, decided to speak out, organize ourselves and denounce the disappearance of our loved ones; we did this in a context where both authorities from the Institutionalized Revolutionary Party and the National Action party participated through collaboration and/or negligence in these crimes at the state and federal level.  Both levels of government and both parties stained our homes with darkness, terror and impunity.

A first group of 11 families, who at that time were looking for twenty one loved ones, gathered together on December 19, 2009.  Currently, we are looking for 290 missing persons in December 2012.