*Updated Feb. 25*Guadalajara -
Fallout from the latest Human Rights Watch report concerned alleged civilian disappearances during Mexico's drug war is continuing today, as past and present officials say HRW's claims are exaggerated and misleading. Hype is always present in Mexico's drug war, especially when Human Rights Watch comes to town.
Mexico's new PRI government, which has been in office just short of three months, said that recent reports in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post claiming that those papers had received a huge database of missing persons from officials in this country couldn't be true, because there is none.
Earlier this week Mexico's new secretary of government, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, put an end to rumors of a 27,000 name database of "forced disappearances," saying no such list exists. And he admonished an immediate subordinate, undersecretary of government Lía Limón, who on Thursday said "We have a database, a list, in theory, of 27,000 forced disappearances" from 2006 to 2012.
Óscar Vega Marín, a former executive secretary of a federal agency charged with maintaining details on missing persons (Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública), supported Osorio Chong's statement.
"The only list we ever had, and the only one Mexico's Attorney General ever had access to, contained 5,319 names of people who had been reported as missing. But it was at least a decade old. We were eventually able to locate 422 of those people. Some were alive, some were dead," said Vega Marín.
He added, "I categorically reject the existence of the list alluded to by some press sources, both domestic and international, supposedly based on a leak by the Procuraduría General de la República (Mexico's Attorney General).
On Nov, 12, 2012, the Washington Post published an article entitled Mexico’s crime wave has left about 25,000 missing, government documents show. Its claims are at odds with what officials here have said.
"Mexico’s attorney general has compiled a list showing that more than 25,000 adults and children have gone missing in Mexico in the past six years, according to government documents," it wrote.
"The names on the list — many more than in previous, nongovernment estimates — are recorded in Microsoft Excel columns, along with the dates they disappeared, their ages, the clothes they were wearing, their jobs and a few brief, often chilling, details," the Post said.
But the paper acknowledged, "The leaked list is not complete — or, probably, precise. Some of the missing may have returned home, and some families may never have reported disappearances."
The same conclusion was reached yesterday by the Mexican news service Milenio, which examined the cases of 149 persons who, according to Human Rights Watch, were kidnapped and murdered by Mexican troops or federal security forces. "The document is insupportable, because it is not based upon rigorous methodology," said the network.
Mexico does not deny that forced disappearances have occurred during the brutal 74 month old drug war. But Osorio Chong and other officials claim that most of them were carried out by corrupt local police units, often on the payroll of drug cartels and organized crime (Mexico extends time to weed out corrupt local cops). Whatever the number, it represents a minute percentage of the country's 112 million citizens.
Last summer Mexico's Supreme Court stripped military tribunals of criminal jurisdiction in offenses committed by soldiers against civilian victims, a step which civil libertarians hope will give citizens greater protection from claimed military excesses.
Almost a hundred years ago, U.S. Senator Hiram W. Johnson told colleagues during a floor debate, "The first casualty of war is the Truth." That principle is finding verification in Mexico's drug conflict.
Feb. 25 - Today the sole Mexican agency which is actually charged with the duty of compiling and maintaining an official government database on drug war disappearances - Províctima (Procuraduría Social de Atención a Víctimas del Delito) - reported that they have files on only 1,708 people, based on reports from family members. Unlike other sources, Províctima is undoubtedly the least politicized. MGRR regards the Províctima tally far more authoritative than the questionable databases allegedly relied upon by HRW and some press sources, especially foreign ones.
Feb. 27 - Mexico's drug war disappearances: the "official government list" that proves nothing
Feb. 19 - NY Times figures out, in Mexican drug war Enrique Peña Nieto = Felipe Calderón Hinojosa
Feb. 1 - HRW's latest condemnation of Mexican drug war reveals little understanding of the conflict
Nov. 21, 2011 - The L.A. Times just doesn't get it
© MGRR 2013. All rights reserved. This article may be cited or briefly quoted with proper attribution or a hyperlink, but not reproduced without permission.
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