courtesy: washingtonpost
A new grim tally has been completed on the disappearance of people in the last six years.
The tally has surpassed 26,000 in that brief span of time, a staggering number when compared to and added to the people that have already been killed in the Mexico drug war.
Most of the desaparecidos are people who have been kidnapped and probably killed by the cartels, and they are probably both innocent bystanders and people who may have had some dealings with the drug trade.
But due to the gruesome methods employed by the cartels, many of the victims are never found.
In some cases the cartels make their victims public, by displaying them in the full light of the sun, often bearing marks of unspeakable torture.
Newly elected president Pena Nieto has vowed to address the cartel wars in novel ways to try and bring the situation under control. One of them is to form a task force that would address the problem of the disappeared and try to identify them and solve their cases.
But that is cold comfort to those families are searching for the disappeared. In addition, since information gathering is so problematic, there is no way of telling who amongst the disappeared is dead, alive, or in the hands of the cartel.
More worrisome is the fact that some of the cases of disappearance remain unreported, so that the numbers could actually be much higher.
In some cases, the disappeared could have been kidnapped or killed by the police, as some instances that have been reported point to police involvement, although they are a very small fraction of the total. In others, the person could have fled from the cartel and still be alive, and is not in contact with anyone for fear of being found.
In the past, the government has been slow to respond to the families' requests for investigation. But Human Rights groups are hopeful that the new president is now willing to address the problem.
partially sourced: CNN/ 2.27.13
No comments:
Post a Comment