NGOs and families with missing relatives have slammed “misleading” statements by Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro, who in a report on the security situation in the state this week, claimed, without offering any proof, that 80 percent of all homicide victims are linked to organized crime.
Eight organizations, including the Center for Justice for Peace and Development (Cepad), Por Amor a Ellxs and Entre Cielo y Tierra, also questioned the governor’s figure of 10,777 disappeared persons in Jalisco, pointing out that the federal government’s National Registry of Missing Persons has 14,501 registered cases.
The NGOs said Alfaro’s “public discourse seeks to disappear people who have already disappeared.”
The governor’s “alarming” comments linking four out of five homicide victims to organized crime are without any factual basis, the NGOs noted in a press release, and have the effect of “criminalizing all victims of violence.” They accused the governor of inventing numbers in a bid to deflect responsibility for the current climate of violence.
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