To our MPs: to rise our concern to respect to the recent events in Mexico

On September 24 2014, 43 Mexican students from Rural Teachers College Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos, known as Normal de Ayotzinapa, in Guerrero, Mexico were unlawfully detained by the local Police Force and were made disappear. While the Mexican government has acknowledged that this was a terrible case of forced disappearance and that criminal organization Guerreros Unidos is involved in the event, this is by no means an isolated case. Since the declaration of the War on Drugs by former Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa in 2006, ca.100, 000 people have been killed and 30, 000 have gone missing. The numbers include many activists and independent journalists that the government or the organized crime find uncomfortable are disrespectfully referred to as collateral damage. In many cases, like in the tragedy of Ayotzinapa, portions of the government are infiltrated with criminal organizations to the point that the two are indistinguishable.

The society has rightfully demanded to know the truth of what happened to our students through a series of pacific demonstrations and other expressions of discontent. In turn, the response from the federal authorities has been inefficient to say the least. After almost two months of investigation we still do not know the reason why they were detained or whether they are alive. The investigation, however, has revealed a series of clandestine pits with hundreds of dead bodies in the state of Guerrero. Most of them are yet to be identified. And while recently an official statement saying that the incinerated remains of the students have been found in the surroundings of Iguala, Guerrero, the majority of the population remains sceptic, since there is so far no scientific evidence backing this statement.

In the midst of the crisis, President Enrique Peña Nieto left the country to attend the G20 summit in Australia and visit China at the time that he and his wife are involved in an unrelated scandal of state corruption. This caused indignation and the demonstrations and expressions of condemnation intensified. Upon his return and looking at the civil unrest, Mr. Peña Nieto warned that the State has the legitimate faculty to use public force to re-establish order when any another mechanism has been exhausted. This would not be the first time that Mr. Peña Nieto uses the public force. In 2006 he ordered a brutal offensive on demonstrators in Atenco, when he was governor of the State of Mexico, which resulted in serious violations of human rights, including arbitrary detentions and the raping of 26 women. We do not want this to happen again.

This is why we need your support. We ask you, as part of the international community, to please join us in letting the Mexican authorities know that the eyes of the world are set in Mexico and that the world will not accept the violation of human rights in Mexico. This includes the right of the people to express their views in public and to organise themselves to demand that the authorities fulfil their role in protecting and representing the people. We ask you to sign this letter to support our cause and to support our demand for justice and transparency that the Mexican people deserve.