Enforced disappearances increasingly undermine Mexico
Relatives hold banners with portraits of missing students during a march to demand justice, in Mexico City, August 26, 2022. REUTERS - HENRY ROMERO
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
August 30 is the International Day for Victims of Enforced Disappearance.
According to the United Nations, this violent strategy of terrorizing citizens is a global problem, but in Mexico, where 100,000 people have disappeared since 1964, it has a particular resonance since 2014 and the still unsolved disappearance of 43 students.
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With our correspondent in Mexico,
Gwendolina Duval
In 2021, the committee against enforced disappearances visiting Mexico expressed concern about the Mexican situation and the phenomenon of re-victimization that affects victims and their families in a context where impunity reigns.
Among these many missing, the 43 students of Ayotzinapa, abducted the night of September 26 to 27, 2014. This emblematic affair, which has had a striking rebound with the new recent revelations which qualify the affair as a "state crime" continues to shake up Mexico on this gnawing problem.
Eight years later, only the remains of three of them have been found.
Coming to support the families during a march for justice, Juventina Nicolas, from the collective against torture and impunity, insists: research must not stop.
“
These are eight years of marches, research, suffering for the parents with a great feeling of helplessness because there is still no justice.
What we want is to know where they are!
Where are they ?
she asks.
"
This war that Felipe Calderon started in 2006 and which brought this whole wave of bloodshed and enforced disappearances throughout Mexico affected us all directly or indirectly
," explains Angelica Orozco, a member of the United Forces for Our Disappeared.
The association accompanies families to face the indifference and inaction of the authorities.
Because often it is the relatives themselves who investigate and search for their missing.
“
Our goal will always be to find them.
We see that neither the police nor the local research commission has any intention of changing things
,” she laments.
In Mexico, in the vast majority of cases of enforced disappearances, no culprit is ever punished.
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