Just a day ago Graciela Pérez Rodríguez learned from a news program that there would be a forum on disappeared persons in Mexico City. She didn't know what or why it was being held, but she borrowed some money, took her banner and traveled ten hours from Tamaulipas to announce publicly that her daughter, her brother and her nephew were missing.
So Tuesday morning, in the middle of Amnesty International's [AI] presentation of its report on enforced disappearances in Mexico, the woman stood up before reporters and people from human rights organizations and told her story:
"My 13-year old daughter has been missing for 294 days, together with my brother and three nephews. The Zetas snatched them in Ciudad Mante, Tamaulipas. The state prosecutor said they can't find them because it is very dangerous. No one listens there, so we traveled ten hours to come to these forums in Mexico City to ask that they look for them," she said.That was the first time that Graciela had revealed her case publicly. And then members of other families present at the forum told their stories.
"I am Mrs. Laura Vázquez and I am looking for my daughter, Nadia. She was disappeared on August 22 of last year. She has three children, ages 13, 11 and 3 years. She left her home in Ecatepec [state of Mexico] to take a course at Telmex [phone company], and she never returned. We don't know where or how she was seized," the woman said.Gabriela Hernández related,
"My partner, Teodulfo Torres, was disappeared on March 26, 2013. He was the only direct witness to the attack suffered by [Juan Francisco] Kuykendall, a theater director wounded in the December 1 protests in Mexico City. It is no coincidence that the chief witness has disappeared," she said.None of these cases were part of the report "Confronting a Nightmare: Disappearances in Mexico", presented on Tuesday morning, and they are not on the lists of other organizations because, as Laura Vázquez said, the families begin alone to search for their lost ones.
In concluding the presentation, victims organized in the Joint Forces for Our Disappeared in Coahuila (FUNDEC), approached the complainants to give their support and to add them to the citizen groups that are searching.
After hearing the cases from the presidium, Rupert Knox, who is Amnesty International's investigator for Mexico, questioned the official figures regarding the disappearances:
"We must remember that these are not numbers that reflect reality."He recalled that during his visit to Monterrey for the report, a young woman approached the organization to report for the first time the disappearance of her sister that had occurred a year earlier.
"She delayed a year to find the existence of an organization to support the disappearances and decide to denounce. This reflects the situation that many complaints aren't made to associations, and we know that the institutions have not properly registered the cases."In this connection, Knox was asked about the statement of the Attorney General of the Republic, Jesús Murillo Karam, who said that the list of 26,000 was being purged and that there could be fewer cases. The AI researcher said that he is concerned about it because the government has not clarified how it will purge the list, a matter that officials voiced during a meeting Monday.
"What we said yesterday in the meetings we had with SEGOB [Secretariat of Government Affairs] and with the Assistant Public Prosecutor is fair, that cases cannot be excluded based on the evidence that the local prosecutors have gathered because that's where there are serious deficiencies. Therefore, if the process of purging the cases is simply to ask the local prosecutors for the information that they have, that isn't enough. They have to investigate each case to determine if that person is still missing and if he was removed by force," he explained.Knox said that some serious work must be performed and not just to show a reduction in the numbers.
During the presentation of the report that took place at the Museum of Memory and Tolerance, Knox was accompanied by Daniel Zapico, director of AI in Mexico, and Brenda Rangel and Lucia Baca, sister and mother of two young disappeared men.
There, the victims and the investigator agreed in stating that the Unit for Search of Disappeared Persons, announced in recent days by the Attorney General's Office (PGR), has to show immediate results or it will lose credibility. Knox explained that the Mexican government itself certainly has the capacity to give justice and truth to the families--what is missing is the will and giving priority to the disappearances.
Knox declared that a change in the treatment of families and in the investigation of the missing persons must be seen "now".
Baca noted that they hope to increase the number of public prosecutors assigned to the Unit because it is impossible for twelve [prosecutors] to do serious work. ... Spanish original