Peace Brigades International-Canada Board member Paul Bocking writes, “Meeting with Antonio of Comite Cerezo, a human and labour rights group in Mexico City accompanied by Peace Brigades International – Mexico Project.”
The Alliance for Global Justice has explained, “Antonio and other family members and associates were part of the student movements of the 90s and early 2000’s before several of them were framed, arrested, and incarcerated by the Mexican government. Antonio spent more than seven years as a political prisoner.”
PBI-Mexico further notes on their website, “The Cerezo Committee was established after the arrests, torture and detentions of the brothers Alejandro, Héctor and Antonio Cerezo Contreras in maximum-security penitentiaries in Mexico.”
PBI-Mexico has also highlighted, “The Committee currently defends the rights of victims of political repression in Mexico. It is a leading organization in the documentation of human rights violations in the country, also documenting violations committed against human rights defenders.”
On May 29, PBI-Mexico posted on their Facebook page, “[Comité Cerezo is] participating in a sit-in as part of the commemoration of the International Week of the Disappeared Detainee and the National Campaign against Enforced Disappearance in Mexico.”
That international week this year was from Monday May 27 to Friday May 31.
LaRed21 reported (in Spanish), “Various organizations of victims, indigenous, popular and human rights movements grouped in the National Campaign Against Forced Disappearance” took part in this sit-in.
The sit-in happened in the Zócalo, which is the common name of the main square in central Mexico City. It is the centre of government for both the nation and the capital.
Pagina12 has reported (in Spanish), “According to the latest data provided by the Secretariat of Human Rights of Mexico, in the Aztec country there are about 38 thousand people missing and in the last 12 years there were two thousand clandestine graves.”
That article also noted, “In a thousand of them, no exhumation process has yet been carried out because the state does not have the institutional capacities to carry them out, according to the Secretariat.”
And a RadioFórmula article (in Spanish) highlighted that the demonstration was “held almost six months after the start of the new government because there has been no progress on any of the cases of enforced disappearances.”
The PBI-Mexico website notes, “In addition to surviving torture and unjust detention, the organization’s members have been threatened and harassed.”
The Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project began accompanying Comité Cerezo in 2002.