According to Human Rights groups, and the United Nations, thousands of people in Mexico have been disappeared since the Drug War began, and the Mexican government is one of the suspects.
Those people being disappeared are not drug dealers, or drug runners, but human rights activists, oil workers, journalists and even migrant workers. The traditional ‘right’ leaning Mexican government has always viewed human rights activists as left wing commies, and more of a threat than illegal drug dealers.
To put the current situation in perspective, Mexico’s own National Commission on Human Rights, documented the disappearance of 532 people (disappeared by the government) thought to be rights activist in the 1960s-1970s (during the Cold War). Since 2006 more than 3,000 people have been disappeared.
In 2006, right wing President Felipe Calderón, went on the war path, officially against the drug lords. Is it a coincidence that the Mexican government’s so called war on drugs is actually killing and disappearing civilians?
The facts are that since the Mexican Drugs War began, the people being targeted are civilians, including U.S. citizens. Far more civilians have been killed than drug dealers. Keep in mind these killings are not from aerial bombing, but from shootings and beatings, and other means, by police, soldiers and drug gangs. That means the killers had to specifically target the victims.
To put it in perspective: In all of Afghanistan, in 2010, there were 2,421 civilian deaths (Congressional Research Service). In just one Mexican city, Ciudad Juarez, there were 3,111 civilian deaths. That’s one Mexican city compared to all of Afghanistan.
Total deaths in the Drugs War, according to Mexico’s Federal Attorney General’s office, just for 2010, is 12,456 people by the end of November. And that does not count people disappeared.
In the city of Saltillo, there are 118 documented cases of disappearances since 2007. The government security forces are believed to be involved in at least 25 of those. Human Rights Watch documented 12 cases of disappearances in the state of Nuevo León, in which government military personnel and police are believed to be involved.
Hypocritically the Mexican government signed the UN International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, in 2008. To be fair, not all disappearances are linked to the Mexican government, but it sure is strange that there should be skyrocketing numbers of civilian killed and disappeared, since the Drugs War started in 2006. Are both the Mexican military and police, and the drug gangs, that bad at finding their targets?