85,053 people are missing in Mexico, according to Segob

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Since Mexico declared war on organized crime in 2006 and up to April 7th, 85,053 people are reported missing and unaccounted for in the country.

The Undersecretary of Human Rights, Population and Migration of the Ministry of the Interior (Segob) Alejandro Encinas Rodríguez, informed that 10 states account for 76% of the disappearances: Jalisco, Michoacán, Mexico City, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Guanajuato, Sonora, Sinaloa, Zacatecas and the State of Mexico.

The federal official explained that in the last year, a 22% decrease in disappearances was reported.

“This is the most significant decrease we have had in this period, which already marks a trend in the last two years… We do not want to declare victory, but this is progressing well, we are getting results”, he said during President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s press conference.

Regarding the disappearances of children under 18 years of age in the country, the undersecretary commented that 55% are female. The undersecretary informed that there is also a decrease in findings of clandestine graves. In 2020, 33% less was found, and so far, in 2021, a decrease of 18% has been reported.

The undersecretary commented that the findings of more clandestine graves during the beginning of the current administration are because the search efforts were intensified.

“It is due to the increased confrontation between criminal groups in different regions of the country, but also the intensification of search efforts. Only in these three months and one week of 2021, 293 search actions have been carried out,” he said.

Regarding the bodies located in the graves, the official reported that of the 2,736 bodies recovered in 1,606 clandestine burial sites. From December 2018 to March 2021, 38% had been identified, and 22.6% delivered to their relatives.

Tecomán, Colima; ‘Úrsulo Galván, Veracruz; Acapulco, Guerrero; Playa Vicente, Veracruz; Savatierra, Guanajuato, and Ahome, Sinaloa, are the municipalities where the majority of clandestine graves have been located, 456 (28%) of the total.

The head of the National Search Commission (CNB), Karla Quintana Osuna, commented that 1,413 search days had been carried out so far. She detailed that between 2019 and 2021, federal subsidies of more than 1,092 million pesos have been given to the federal entities for search actions.

The official commented that the National Search System is asking the Chamber of Deputies to establish an open parliament to discuss the Attorney General’s Office’s Organic Law.

“In the Organic Law there are still concerns regarding the National Search System, regarding the rights of missing persons’ relatives, regarding the support mechanism abroad and, of course, the implication that neither the Attorney General’s Office nor the state prosecutors’ offices should be excluded from the implementation of the law and the homologated search protocol,” she warned.

Source: Expánsion Política