Bodies found in fosas:"Mexico has no ability or interest in having a database"

Borderland Beat Aristegui Noticias: Translated by Tristan Mexico Voices

DNA Database map 2013-click to enlarge

Note:  There is no good reason why Mexico should not create a DNA database.  Database models are in more nations than not. DNA testing is inexpensive, for type matching purposes. It is an atrocity compounded to discount identification tools available.   A family members of base storing the DNA profiles of the missing can be matched against remains discovered.  It not only should be done, it is the human action that Mexico must proceed with.

Additionally, where known narco body dumping grounds, and fosas fields are found, exploratory searches should be conducted.  Concerned nations have offered help that Mexico refuses, pressure on the Peña administration must be placed to agree to a coalition of search groups, forensic scientists,humanitarian groups, nations with search advanced technology would be ideal.  Similar to that used in the aftermath  Hatiti earthquake and the Katrina Hurricane.  

Marches and demonstrations are fine, but unless clear demands for specific actions are made, it will be just another fashionable cause, trendy for just a blink of an eye, then gone. Below is the article from Aristegui Noticias......(Carmen Aristegui is the Mexican journalist I most respect)  Paz, Chivis

Mexico has a better knowledge of the number of gallons of oil it exports every day than it does of the number of disappeared persons it has in the country. This gives a true picture as to where the Mexican State's priorities lie, states Ariel Dulitzky, president of the UN’s Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

"It is profoundly disconcerting; the disappeared persons are mixed in with lost and unidentified people; there is no plan for disappeared persons in Mexico, no genetic database," he stated.

In an interview with Carmen Aristegui on CNN, aired last Thursday evening [Nov. 20], Dulitzky said that in the case involving the 43 disappeared student teachers in Iguala,

"We saw that in the first pits they dug up, they found human remains, and there is nothing to compare the DNA material against to be able to identify them. Today we have exhumed human remains and don't know whose they are.

"There is no ability or interest in the Mexican State to have a database."

He stated that the Iguala-Ayotzinapa case is unique and unprecedented, regarding the number of forces who are looking for the missing students, if the ten thousand troops from the federal forces are counted.

"In general, the government has not responded to the needs that they have in the face of a high number of enforced disappearances," he stated.

He continued:

"There have to be protocols for emergency searches; they can't wait 72 hours. There must be experts who are able to perform technical analyses, have the capacity to investigate, and are able to make systematic analyses, above all in the places where the disappearances occurred."

He recalled that a few days after the events in Iguala,

"We issued a press release saying that this would be a test to see how the Mexican State would solve this case."

"What we see is that it is an extremely difficult challenge and one that still has not been overcome. We believe that there are many doubts, many problems that should be a turning point, a watershed moment in Mexico's history on how the subject of forced disappearances is handled,

 "To this day the government has not taken on this sad fact as a political opportunity to adopt general public and structural policies to prevent these events in the future, to look for missing persons, not just for the 43," he added.

He affirmed that there are 43 disappeared persons and not a single one of the 80 detainees is charged with forced disappearance, not a single one. They are all cases of kidnapping or organized crime, but there is no legal concept for forced disappearance. Even if they manage to convict anyone, no one will be convicted for forced disappearance, at least as they are being held today. Even though [forced disappearance] may be defined in the law, the definition is insufficient, Dulitzky stated.

He also remarked that the National Human Rights Commission says that there are more than eight thousand unidentified remains in the country. If there were a genetic database, eight thousand disappearance cases would be solved. This is unacceptable apathy on the part of the Mexican State, he concluded. Spanish Original

MV Note: On Nov. 27, President Peña Nieto, in his speech proposing government actions in response to the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students, said he would submit to Congress a constitutional reform initiative to empower it to issue general laws on torture and forced disappearance, further strengthening protocols to prevent officials from committing these crimes, create a national system for tracing missing persons and publish the regulations for the General Law of Victims, passed in May of 2013.