Mexico – No Somos Expedientes: technology to support relatives of missing persons
The platform nosomosexpedientes.mx is a digital space that provides relatives of missing persons with helpful tools and valuable information for following up on their investigation and interaction with the public prosecutors' offices.
Mexico breached a disgraceful and terrible total of 110,000 missing persons. Yet, with dignity, resilience and resistance, hundreds of families face the apathy and negligence of indolent authorities, who have been unable to address the crisis of disappearances and the backlog in forensic studies in the country. These families, faced with the state's ineffective response, were forced to push forward investigations to find their loved ones, in most cases without legal advice and facing multiple risks.
Originally published on 26 January 2023, in "La lucha cotidianade los derechos humanos".
National and international civil organisations have witnessed the painful experiences of the families of disappeared persons. However, we have also confirmed that the collective demand by relatives generates the most remarkable results. Given this dreadful reality and to contribute to their noble struggle for the truth and justice for disappeared relatives, at a press conference on 18 January at the Centro Prodh, we presented the platform nosomosexpedientes.mx. The platform provides relatives of disappeared persons with helpful tools and valuable information for following up on their investigation and interaction with the prosecutors' offices.
Jesús Peña, deputy representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico (OHCHR), attended the presentation. Also present were Valeria Tirado, founder and director of operations of the developer VIRK, and Maricel Torres and Karla Martínez, women searchers who accompany groups and family members in Poza Rica, Veracruz, and Guanajuato, respectively.
"The years on the journey have been empowering us. We have been learning to confront the authorities and to know our rights as indirect victims, something that life forced us to do because of the disappearance of our relatives. This platform is vital for the new cases of families just beginning this struggle. We want them to know that having their records at home and knowing their rights will not take away the suffering, but it will make the road easier for them", said Maricel, who is looking for her son Iván Eduardo Castillo Torres; he has remained disappeared for 11 years.
"The victims, who are pioneers in this, realise that we have the means to demand and the right; we both have the right to look for them, and they have the right to be looked for. So when you have a manual, this tool or training facilitates the work of confronting the Prosecutor's Office. We don't have to ask them to investigate, but we can demand that they do it because it is our right," added Karla, searching for her brother Juan Valentín, who disappeared back in 2020 in Guanajuato.
As emphasised at the launch of nosomosexpedientes.mx, no technological tool replaces the right of families to have dignified and adequate legal advice. Nor does it replace the authorities' responsibility to provide timely follow-up to the inquiries, explain the proceedings to the families and generate an investigation plan to guarantee truth and justice for the victims, as established in Mexican and international laws. But assuming that thousands of processes and disappearances continue, the platform seeks to creatively use new technologies to disseminate tools that contribute to the legal empowerment of families.
Both at the presentation and subsequent conferences, we joined the search for and demanded the immediate appearance of Ricardo Lagunes and Antonio Díaz, who disappeared on 15 January in Cerro de Ortega, municipality of Tecomán, Colima, for their defence of land and territory. It is essential to support, listen to and disseminate, even more, the demands of those looking for their disappeared loved ones, whose dignity reminds us that they are not mere files but people who are missing from all of us.
Source: centroprodh
Related Posts:
The Central American Province of the Society of Jesus marks the first anniversary of the Nicaraguan government's confiscation of the Central American University, condemning the violation of education rights and academic freedom. They call for an end to repression, the release of political prisoners, and a return to dialogue and justice.
Stan Swamy Day in Viragalur was a moving tribute to a man who devoted his life to justice and the upliftment of the marginalized.
The worldwide network of Jesuit organisations, Xavier Network, involved in responding to humanitarian crises around the world, expressed shock at the April 2 killing of 7 aid workers delivering essential food aid. "We cannot be silent." Xavier Network joined the global Jesuits' call for "an immediate ceasefire, for negotiations and for the beginning of a process that will bring freedom, liberty and justice for all in the Middle East, the only road to true peace."
On the memorial day of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, J. Baptiste, a Jesuit genocide survivor from Rwanda, shared his story of the tragic event. On behalf of fellow Rwandans, he concluded with a prayer: "My prayer today is to find the last remains of the victims…, then [this] commemoration will mean something different. Only then will our wounds heal and the ongoing reconciliation process move faster."
To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, the Vatican published a new document, Dignitas Infinita, which condemns, among other grave violations, emerging forms of digital violence against human dignity, such as Cyberbullying, Online Hate Speech, Social Exclusion, Economic Exploitation, Digital Surveillance, Body Shaming, and Microaggressions.
"Conflicts in Africa in the Context of the Exploitation of Natural and Mining Resources" was the theme of a seminar in Accra, Ghana. Participants in the seminar convened by the Symposium of the Episcopal Conference of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) called for the end of the ruthless depletion of natural resources by multinational corporations and foreign powers.
