The five Latin American countries where the 40 migrants came from deceased in the fire that occurred at the end of March in a detention center of the National Institute of Migration (INM) in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, they are also co-responsible for the violence, denounced this Tuesday human rights organizations that are litigating the case to fight impunity.
“And all the countries that have victims in this country are jointly responsible, I would tell them: ‘please defend your nationals.’ Is it more important to look good with Mexico than to defend its nationals? Because we have not seen a forceful defense of their migrants,” said Ana Lorena Delgadillo, from the Foundation for Justice and the Democratic State during a joint presentation organized by the Washington Office on Latino Affairs (WOLA).
This expert agreed with her peers that the silence of the region’s governments is a burden more for victimsand that increases the suffering and the little chance of reparation to the families of those who died in that fire as in at least 10 other cases registered in shelters and detention centers during the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
“It is much easier for this violence to continue repeating itself if Mexico has the complicity of all the countries,” Delgadillo said. “There was a demonstration from El Salvador there, but we do not know to what extent it is acting in defense of its victims, but if the countries are not capable of defending their nationals, they are giving Mexico permission to continue impunity.”
In the heat of the events, the governments of Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Venezuela reported that they had transferred their consular teams to provide “support” to the victims and coordinate with the Mexican authorities to “identify the victims” since their subsequent repatriation of the bodies.
They ask for an investigative commission
In a list of recommendations to avoid impunity, at least four organizations involved in the conversation have agreed that only an investigative commission with the support of the international community could get to the bottom of the matter and settle the pertinent responsibilities.
They denounced that for 12 years no progress has been made in the investigations of notorious facts involving the death of migrants on their way to the United States, and the case of Ciudad Juárez comes 12 years after the tamaulipas massacre occurred on August 22, 2010, when an organized crime group involved in migrant smuggling murdered 72 people in that state due to disputes with another gang.
Blanca Navarrete, representative of Comprehensive Human Rights in Action (DHIA), in Ciudad Juarez, said that the request of a special commission supervised by the United Nations (UN) and with the support of experts from outside Mexico, would be a guarantee for delve into the investigation of at least the most notorious cases of deaths of migrants.
“We ask for a special commission, a kind of independent expert group that can examine this case and the other massacres of migrants where there is impunity to date,” he said.
The organizations do not trust that the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) can offer a response in light of other events where no investigation has been carried out and impunity has prevailed. “When the State is investigated is when the prosecutors are put to the test,” Navarrete pointed out.
“The only way to move forward with this case and understand all the corruption that is behind the National Migration Institute is with an independent commission. To date, the FGR has already accepted technical assistance with the support of the United Nations for five cases of massacres. of migrants, who have not moved from there, and what we are asking is that this case be added, “added Ana Lorena Delgadillo.
The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, accepted in recent days the investigation that the FGR is carrying out against the commissioner of the INM, Francisco Garduño, as responsible in the chain of command for the fire in Ciudad Juárez, in whose preliminary hearing of this Tuesday the FGR has accused him.
The FGR sustains the case against Garduño in the illegal exercise of public service and omission in his obligations as the head of Mexico’s migration policy and, therefore, with a degree of responsibility in the death of the 40 migrants in the Ciudad Juárez fire .
The head of the Mexican Executive said in recent days that he was unaware of the scope of the accusation against the official of his administration and that the government palace hoped to “make decisions at the right time.”
A militarized immigration policy
During the conversation, the organizations also expressed the increasingly predominant role of the armed forces of the Aztec country in tasks that would correspond to the police in migration matters.
A phenomenon to which they see the starting point in the Joint Declaration of June 2019 signed by the former president of the United States Donald Trump with López Obrador whose result promoted the militarization of the immigration issue in Mexico.
“From there, Mexico made a commitment to the United States to stop migration by establishing 6,000 elements throughout the territory of the Mexican Republic -especially in the south and north- of the National Guard that we know are militarized and now it reaches 28,000. ”, pointed out Delgadillo.
The organizations also see the Mexican immigration policy “pushed” by the US and believe that the result of these policies “kills” due to the hundreds of migrants that are part of the fatal statistics, where impunity and silence reign from the countries of origin. emission of irregular migratory flows, they denounced.
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