AYOTZINAPA: The Cynicism of a Criminal Government

AYOTZINAPA

The Cynicism of a Criminal Government

Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, July 21, 2018. More than forty-six months after the Forced Disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa Normal School students, the Mothers and Fathers continue looking for them without rest.

On September 26, 2014, the Municipal, State and Ministerial police of Guerrero, Mexico as well as the Federal Police and the Mexican Army in the service of organized crime forcibly disappeared the 43 students, along with three others murdered and more than 20 wounded. The security forces that assaulted our children are part of the current government in Mexico.

Despite the supposed commitment of President Enrique Peña Nieto to clarify the case, the National Attorney General (PGR) conducted a weak investigation. The PGR gave privilege to the false thesis involving the Dump of Cocula that provided a blanket of impunity to high federal officials and rejected others suspects of great importance. To achieve its ends, the PGR agents tortured detainees to provide confessions proposed by the PGR, manipulated the investigation, planted and hid evidence to avoid reaching the truth.

When the Independent Group of Expert Investigators (GIEI) arrived in Mexico hopes were opened to find the 43 students, as the research acquired a new rhythm and dynamism. New search routes and lines of investigation were uncovered, but the government soon began to put obstacles in the way, carrying out smear campaigns that led the Inter American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) to withdraw its experts from the country due to lack of conditions to faithfully continue contributing to the investigations. Since then the government has refused to deepen and advance in the investigations, and despite the existence of concrete evidence against Municipal Police of Huitzuco and the Federal Police, these have not proceeded to arrests.

On May 31 of this year, a light of Hope illuminated the path of truth and justice for Ayotzinapa, when the First Collegiate Court of the First Circuit of Reynosa in Tamaulipas State issued a ruling ordering the creation of a Commission of Inquiry integrated by the Public Ministry, the National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) and representatives of the victims. Far from obeying the ruling, the PGR and more than 100 institutions of the government attacked the historic court decree. Eventually, the Third Unitary Court of that same jurisdiction succumbed, and under the pressure of the current government a decided was given to suspend the creation of the Commission for Truth and Justice in the case of the Ayotzinapa-Iguala case.

The cynicism of this Government has no limits. It was not enough to violently disappear our children and pretend to carry out a murky investigation that only re-victimizes us; today the government violates and attacks an official judicial ruling that orders the investigation of the whereabouts of our children.

The unprecedented level of coordination shown by the more than 100 government institutions that attacked the original judicial ruling of the First Collegiate Court in Tamaulipas was never given when it came to the search for our missing students, but only when it came to preventing the full investigation and clarification of the whereabouts of our children.

Yet we declare again, we will not take a single step backwards. We will continue demanding that our children be returned to us alive.

FRATERNALLY,

BECAUSE THEY WERE TAKEN ALIVE,

WE WANT THEM BACK ALIVE!

Parent Committee of the 43 Ayotzinapa Students