On Thursday, the UN’s human rights commissioner accused Mexico’s military of blocking a professional inquiry into the 43 students who vanished in a violent incident that rattled that nation nearly nine years ago.
In its report released in August of last year, a Mexican truth commission found that the students, who vanished while travelling to a protest in Mexico City, were victims of “state-sponsored crime.”
In September 2014, the students from a teachers’ college in Ayotzinapa were detained by local law enforcement and federal military personnel as they passed through the city of Iguala in the southwest.
The first 100 kids were shot at in a quick exchange of gunfire, according to survivors. However, scores of children aboard the buses vanished that evening, and it is still unclear what happened to them.
A panel of experts (GIEI) looking into the event stated earlier this week that because it had not had enough access to information, the experts were forced to end their inquiry and depart Mexico.
Following its report, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico issued a statement on Thursday claiming that Mexico’s Armed Forces had not provided all the material required by an independent panel looking into the disappearance.
Since its inception, the GIEI has determined the necessity of obtaining thorough and accurate information from all authorities in order to shed light on the circumstances surrounding the students’ forcible abduction and other grave human rights violations. In light of this, the OHCHR expresses its grave disappointment that the Armed Forces have not delivered all the required information despite the political will demonstrated by the federal government at the highest level.
The assertions, however, have been refuted by Mexico’s president, who has defended the military’s degree of collaboration.
In a press conference on Thursday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said, “If progress has been made, it is because of the cooperation of the navy and the army.”
He stated that finding the missing kids remains the top priority and that 115 people, including two generals and a former prosecutor, have already been jailed.