“No, that’s not it, don’t worry…there are just some migrants buried there”

-Comment by a public functionary during a project of mapping hidden graves

On Dec. 10, 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed. In its Article 13, the Declaration says: Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including their own, and return to their country.

Sixty-seven years have passed since the Declaration, during which international conventions on the particular rights of women, children, the disabled, migrants and others have taken place. Mexico has been a signatory to all of these conventions, and furthermore, it passed its first Migrant Law four years ago that promised significant advances for human rights of migrants who are passing through the country, at least according to the transcript of the congressional session of Feb. 24, 2011, where the senators’ speeches announced freedom of movement and celebrated the inclusion, in the law’s article 2, of the so-called ten commandments of the human rights migrants.

The month after that law was passed, the first article of the constitution was amended to say that both citizens and foreigners will enjoy the human rights recognized by the constitution and by international treaties to which Mexico is a signatory.

However, at the beginning of this year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights made the following declarations about our country: “Mexico is a clear example of the form in which uncontrollable criminal violence can endanger democratic advances that have been achieved with so much effort. I have repeatedly expressed my preoccupation with the generalized violence in Central America and Mexico, and the presumed links between organized crime, security forces and local and national authorities. The disappearance of 43 students in Iguala is far from an isolated case. Rather, it challenges the authorities to take decisive measures to end impunity and prevent this type of crime in the future.”

The figures that take into account the violent migration containment programs’ efficiency indicate that 80% do not achieve their objective. The migrants simply mount the attempt-deportation-attempt carousel, so that, with a little luck, they will be able to cross and establish themselves in the United States, (18.3%). Mexico, their primary obstacle, deports 52.2% of migrants, while the US detains 29.5%. In the estimates of the volume of migrants that cross through Mexico, those whose do not have reliable records to determine their quantity are not counted. They become invisible among the invisible.

It is estimated that there are between 70,000 and 120,000 migrants missing in transit in Mexico as of 2006, of whom there are no reliable statistics that determine their quantity. The small official figures only reflect that the families of the disappeared cannot come to Mexico due to lack of resources or migration documents to make formal reports to the public ministries, the only door to the official registry system, which cannot be considered even remotely adequate. These estimates are based on the second Special Report on Kidnapping of Migrants in Mexico by the National Human Rights Commission, published in February 2011, which counts 214 kidnappings with a total of 11,333 victims in only six months. Between 70,000 and 120,000 migrants missing in transit through Mexico as of 2006.

The collusion of Mexican authorities, from all levels of government, with criminals, whether through action, omission, negligence, collusion, protection or complicity, is clearly documented. As of 2010, the government of Mexico could no longer continue hiding the massacres or the hidden graves, which contain both Mexicans and migrants. The news of the killing of 72 migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas traveled around the world. It was discovered that the municipal police of San Fernando had been involved in the deaths of the migrants by serving as lookouts, intercepting people and failure to carry out their duty by observing, without intervening, in actions committed by the criminal organization “Los Zetas.”

Forced disappearance is the main issue. This is a tragedy that brings together Mexican and Central American families. Mexico has a large debt to pay and it needs to settle accounts with what happens to people in its territory, as guarantor of social and personal security. International instruments consider that the crime of forced disappearance violates the victim’s right to personal security, to liberty, to life, to not be subject to torture and to other punishments or inhuman and degrading mistreatments.

The figures of forced disappearance in our country have reflected a considerable growth in the past few years. According to figures of the National Registry of the Disappeared and Misplaced of the Department of the Interior, published in October 2014, 22,610 people have disappeared since Dec. 1, 2006 and were still missing in 2014. Almost 50% of these disappearances took place between 2012 and 2014. The Secretary of the Interior appeared before the Senate and recognized that as of Dec. 31, 2014 there were 24,812 disappeared people, according to current reports, noting that many cases had not been subject to judicial investigations, including Mexicans and most foreigners.

The Interamerican Convention on Forced Disappearances of Persons (May 28, 1996) obligates member states to classify forced disappearance in their internal law in accordance with international standards. Mexico ratified this convention and it took effect in May 2002.

Thirteen years later, Mexico has still not changed its internal law. Only last July 10, it was stated in the Official Journal of the Federation that a reform giving Congress the power to legislate about forced disappearance, and to comply with international obligations to classify it. When that legislation is passed, it will be possible to demand searches for the disappeared and for the truth about what has happened.

Currently, there are five initiatives in committees in the Senate to write and expedite the Law on Forced Disappearance and the disappearance of people by individuals, which should bring together the conditions laid out in the international regulations about the material. This law would create the criteria for a coherent policy and could put special emphasis on groups in vulnerable situations, like women, migrants, human rights defenders and journalists, in addition to responding to the opinions of organizations and civil society.

The Law on Forced Disappearance should especially consider the fact that migrants that find themselves in transit through Mexican territory can easily become victims of kidnapping or murder, and that these crimes are almost never reported because of the insurmountable difficulty of going to a government office in Mexico when family resources are lacking, documented entry into the country is impossible and there are no mechanisms of international coordination to report crimes from other countries. Being that reporting a crime is a condition that guarantees a search and recognition of the victim, the law should also recognize conditions of security and economic resources.

In the aisles of the chamber of the Senate, there are rumors that the legislative process to pass the Law on Forced Disappearance has been suspended until the executive power presents its own initiative for a general law on forced disappearance with the goal of expediting a law that will be able to count on the support of all the parliamentary groups.

From this tribunal that gives us the large news media companies, and with the relatives of migrants disappeared in transit through Mexico as honorable witnesses, we demand that the United Commissions of Justice, Human Rights and Legislative Studies end debate on the General Law to Prevent, Investigate, Sanction and Repair Forced Disappearance of Persons and Disappearance of Persons Committed by Individuals, incorporating in its summary the vulnerable groups, especially migrants in transit through Mexican territory and civil society organizations that defend them.

So, while we expect institutional solutions to be impotent, the issue of migration moves between hidden graves, disappearances, deaths on the border, sexual assaults, extortions and geopolitical conditions. Today, we are with mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters from Central America who are searching for their loved ones, who are not in their places of origin, nor their destinations, and the last communication they sent was from here, from the country of transit.

10 December 2015

- Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano (Meso-American Migrant Movement)

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