The Interior Secretary, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, as well as the Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam, talked about one of the most dramatic issues regarding insecurity in Mexico: disappearances. Osorio claimed that the current database on missing persons held by the government would drastically decrease its size when authorities clean it up. According to the Secretary, it’s very likely that several of the cases on the list are of persons that have already been found (dead or alive) or migrants that willingly disappeared. Consistent with the “cleaning up” eagerness of the list, Murillo Karam announced the creation of a Special Unit for Finding Missing Persons within PGR (its initial staff number consists of 12 agents). However, how to solve such an immense amount of cases with a terribly precarious infrastructure?
Figures, whether they are official, registered by NGO’s or other interested parties, are in every case, frightening. Apart from the official number (26,121), the Propuesta Cívica (Civic Proposal) organization presented a database with registries of 20 thousand 851 disappearances. In the same vein, the National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) counted more than 5,000 disappearances and at least 9,000 unidentified corpses during the past administration. On the other hand, Human Rights Watch has at least 149 registered forced disappearances, in which the Army, the Marine or the federal, state or municipal police forces were involved. In short, the disappearances issue is not an easy one. How many persons have been “abducted” with their current whereabouts remaining unknown? How many more have been displaced by violence? How many others have been victims of enforced disappearances? Is the government willing to clarify cases of enforced disappearances and punish responsible authorities, whether civil or military, if required? What is the role of governments of other countries, especially Central America, since allegedly, lots of disappearances are migrants in transit?
Unfortunately, besides the size of figures, the infrastructure that attends the missing persons cases, suffers from disorganization, lack of direction and no strategy whatsoever. Tools, mechanisms and coordination protocols between authorities of the country are quite precarious and, in some cases, nonexistent. The lack of a systematic protocol that designates which information should be transmitted and to whom is one of the greatest obstacles in the search for missing persons. Another problem is the ambiguity of the legal definition of “disappearance”. Regarding this matter, the National Registry of Missing or Disappeared Persons Data Act does not clearly state the cases of individuals who were abducted against their will but whose captors never claimed to commit the crime (in other words, they can’t be considered as kidnappings even if, in the broad sense of the word, they are). It neither reflects those cases in which family did not made a legal complaint because they were afraid or did not trust authorities (the black figure of crime). Those factors could increase the number of missing persons to levels even more terrible than they currently are. On the other hand, those figures could decrease if it were feasible to link the thousands of unidentified body parts, with data from those who have made legal complaints. This would be possible using biometric tests or, better yet, a national biometric database. The downside is that such a technology would require an investment that government doesn’t seem too eager to do (or will it?) In any given case, this matter would not influence those disappearances currently occurring.
As of now, the promise of the federal government remains there (which doesn’t necessarily mean willingness nor a guarantee that some advances on the matter will be made). Let us trust that, at least on this issue, Pena’s administration will act accordingly and shall not set up a montage in order to have a media control over reality. Voices coming from those who have been victims of pain are impossible to silence.
CIDAC
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