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#AYOTZINAPA The terrorism of the State and the human rights of the victims.

Thursday 13 November 2014, by Comité Cerezo México

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After listening the press conference given by the Solicitor General of the Republic, his refusal to admit the Ayotzinapa case as a State crime made evident to us that the severe human rights violation against the Ayozinapa normalistas students will not be –as they have not been- treated as their exceptional gravity requires.

The conference, far from being informative, is part of an impunity mechanism whose aim is to demobilize the outrage of the civil society about this STATE CRIME. The conference never aimed at pursuing justice or truth. Its evident aim was producing two feelings: sadness and impotence. These feelings tend to paralyze each one of us who went down on the street, demanding the return alive of the disappeared students.

The State says that the students are still to be considered disappeared, as long as there are not forensic confirmations of the fact, but at the same time Murillo Karam asserts that they were horribly executed, playing with the information and the images as well as presenting witnesses showing clear signs of torture, in order to persuade us about the same fact that he himself refuses to acknowledge immediately after. This attitude is a torture on its own, as the students’ relatives have declared.

In answering the questions of the journalists, the Solicitor General denies that the Ayotzinapa case is a State crime. Our organization, based on our effort for supplying documentary evidence of human rights’ violation, for which we have received 13 death threats, is in the position to affirm not only that it is indeed the case of a State crime, but also that it abides by a strategy of State terrorism. Quoting the international judges who took part in the first hearing of the TPP Mexico (Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos/ People Permanent Court), since before the Iguala developments there were evidence of State terrorism:

“The (People Permanent) Court (Mexican section) considers that many of the episodes which have been established in front of the Court are indeed acts of State terrorism, which is a State policy planned and executed in order to fight the social movement with illegal means, paralyze and destroy the political and ideological opposition and/ or end up with the armed opposition, and/ or aiming to justify the suspension of the constitutional rights, the establishment of a state of emergency and the human rights violation.” [1]

These actions aim to achieve, among the Mexican population, the submissive acceptation and the abandonment of organized resistance against the deepening of structural reforms, which negate human rights to the people.

“During the hearing, the Court verified the presence of a repetitive pattern of behaviours which constitute violations to human rights, such that it can be confirmed the existence of patterns or modalities of behaviour on the part of agents of the Mexican State. In this regard, it has to be noted the repetition, within a general context of impunity, of certain crimes such as murders, illegal executions, forced disappearances, forced displacements, tortures and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatments, raping and other sexual abuses, and criminalization of the social protest.

Such behaviours are repeated and interconnected among the different cases submitted to this Court, and configure a widespread pattern of human rights violation.” [2]

The structural reforms recently approved intensify with concrete actions the sacking of our natural resources, affecting the human rights of the whole Mexican population, even though the Mexican State should warrant these same rights, such as the HR to a just and favourable work and a just and favourable remuneration, the HR to a free education, the HR to a healthy diet, the HR to free and good quality health care, the HR to the territory, among others.

A feature of the actions of State terrorism (illegal and illegitimate acts whose aim is imposing the value of money above that of life in Mexico) is that, as they are justified by a raison d’État, they involve the creation of impunity mechanisms to hide and protect those responsible. The most evident case is the Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (National Commission for Human Rights), which has issued recommendations only in the 0.02% of the complaints received.

These are the reasons why we conclude that the press conference mentioned above is part of a mechanism created by the State to hide the truth and negate justice in the case of the students, which have been forcibly disappeared as a result of a State policy.

In the following lines, we explain what the State neither divulgates nor explains, on the contrary hiding it when given the possibility. The human rights that the State is violating by means of the abovementioned conference, are the following:

HR to the truth: the search for truth implies an ethical commitment with the victims, consisting in showing the economic, political or social reasons of the State crimes, disclosing the repressive logic which produced them, facilitated and uncovered the crimes, signaling its regularity, uncovering the identity, the motivations and the contexts of the crimes, its executors and beneficiaries.

The victims, their families and friends and the whole society have the right to know:

  • Who are those responsible and who the beneficiaries of the crimes are?
  • When, how, why and where happened the facts.
  • Where are now their relatives, in case of forced disappearances?
  • What has been done to investigate the facts and punish those responsible?

The HR to JUSTICE. It means that the State should:

  • Investigate, judge and sanction the material and intellectual persons responsible, the facilitators and beneficiaries of the crimes.
  • Take measures to guarantee the integrity of the victims, their relatives, representatives, witnesses and judicial authorities.

The HR to INTEGRAL REPARATION: this right implies having access to TRUTH and JUSTICE. It means the reparation of every damage and loss suffered by the victims, inasmuch as possible.

Damage reparation refers not only to trying to relieve the suffering of the individuals and communities concerned, but also to overcome the reasons that caused the human rights violation. Thus, reparation involves a permanent, long-term social action aiming to change the social and economic conditions which caused the victimization of several sectors of the population.

For State crimes, integral reparation is possible only if the truth about what happened has been publicly revealed, and if those responsible for the crimes have been penalized. It is possible only if there are warrantees that the violations will not happen again, that is, taking state measures in order to prevent the occurrence of such events.
The right to integral reparation can be fully satisfied only through the implementation of institutional mechanisms aiming to discard the structures that enabled the perpetration of terrible crimes, in order to prevent their repetition.

The main warranty of no repetition is the penalization of those responsible, to avoid the repetition of the same crimes.

HR to MEMORY: Social and socialized memory is the only warranty against the repetition of horrible nights and days. Memory is fundamental in the process of preservation and reconstruction of the history of the popular struggle and of the repression unleashed by the authorities in order to hamper the fact-finding.

Finally, we want to express that, notwithstanding our sadness, the best we can do to recover the joy of life is getting organized and keep on mobilizing, not only for justice in the Ayotzinapa students case, but also for the reappearance of all the disappeared, for justice in the case of all illegal executions, for the release of all the political detainees in our country, and for a transformation of our society into one where all Mexican people can build together the material conditions which are essential for a dignified life.

November 8th 2014

Comité Cerezo México
"Por que ser defensor de derechos humanos, no es sinónimo de terrorista"


[1Sentence of the first hearing of the People permanent Court, mexican section, may 2012, p.22.

[2Sentence of the final thematic hearing about Dirty War as violence, impunity and lack of access to justice. Indigenous community of Santa fe de la Laguna, Michoacán, Mexico, 26-28 september 2014.

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