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.

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.

Families of missing Mexico youth seek answers – Americas – Al Jazeera English

Families of missing Mexico youth seek answers – Americas – Al Jazeera English.

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.

The Number Games

Press release from FUNDEM May 2014.

On February 2013, the Ministry of the Interior (Gobernación) presented a list with 26,121 people disappeared. On May 2014, the National Commission of Human Rights indicated to the Senate that 24,800 people were disappeared. In the same month, the State Attorney’s Office said that only 13,195 cases remained in the list of disappearances. Latter, the Ministry of the Interior said to the Senate that only 8,000 cases of disappearances that occurred during the past presidential administration remained unsolved. In addition, authorities continue to be silent about the number of disappearances taking place under the current presidential administration of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018). The Senate did not even raise questions regarding the conflicting numbers presented by different government agencies, failing to fulfill its function of check-and-balances in human rights issues.

Since 2011, FUNDEM has asked the federal government to create a National Registry of Disappeared Persons. Until today, the number of cases of disappearance remains unclear and the silence of state authorities regarding the methodology used to disclose such numbers adds to the already existing confusion. This raises the question: How many cases of disappearance is the government in fact investigating?

Fuerzas Unidas Por Nuestros Desaparecidos en México.

Interesting map on disappearances in Mexico elaborated by Univision

Briefing note. Second day of the Symposium on Enforced Disappearances organized by United Forces for Our Disappeared in Coahuila (FUUNDEC).

“The impunity during the dirty war in the 1970s in Mexico set the conditions for today’s disappearances. If something had been done before, this would not be happening today.” These were the words of Yanett Bautista, member of the Foundation Nadia Erika Bautista from Colombia. She discussed how the families of the disappeared have driven the process of justice in Colombia. Families are the one searching for their relatives and presenting law initiatives to Congress.  Examples of these are the law recognizing enforced disappearances as a crime and the homage law.  The latter involves the obligation of the state to create a Genetic Database of Unidentified Bodies and treat human remains according to international standards.

Federica Riccardi from Red Cross International expressed that search protocols need to have an open approach in terms of the kind of evidence that is included into the investigations such as photos, study of circumstances and witnesses’ testimonies.  These protocols have to be elaborated with the collaboration of the victims’ families.

Mexican Priest Alejandro Solalinde on Central, South American Migrants’ Perilous Journey to U.S. | Democracy Now!

Mexican Priest Alejandro Solalinde on Central, South American Migrants’ Perilous Journey to U.S. | Democracy Now!.

From IPS: Mexico Reinvents Forced Disappearance

MEXICO CITY, May 14 2013 (IPS) – When people are forcibly disappeared in Mexico, it does not necessarily mean that the victims are immediately killed. In this country of entrenched violence, forced disappearance is also a method used to feed the markets for sexual exploitation and slave labour.

Mexico has regressed “to the barbarism of Roman gladiators,” lawyer Juan López, a legal adviser to Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desparecidos en México (FUNDEM), a support group for families searching for their loved ones, initially in the northern state of Coahuila and now nationwide, told IPS.

In today’s Mexico, where organised crime is rampant and public security has been militarised, forced disappearances do not follow the pattern seen in past decades in this country and others in Latin America, marked by dictatorships, “dirty wars” against opponents and armed conflicts.

These days “just about anyone” is vulnerable, López said. An unknown proportion of the victims fall prey to “illegal businesses that produce lucrative profits from an unpaid slave labour force,” he said.

This includes the forced recruitment of teenagers and young adults as hired killers, workers in the production of drugs or to serve other needs of the cartels, or for organ trafficking.

“There have been confirmed reports of buses stopped by armed groups who take away all the young men,” López said.

March of the Mothers of the Disappeared during Mother’s Day

Nothing to celebrate. Mexicans living abroad. Mexicans living abroad! Do not be indifferent to the pain of these mothers. Thanks to their struggle to find their disappeared, our families in Mexico have not encountered this tragedy. Support these mothers with letters to authorities in Mexico and the country where you live and/or with financial assistance to organizations such as FUNDEM, FUUNDEC, CADHAC, HIJOS Mexico, Human Rights Centre Victoria Diez, etc.