Mexico's High Rates Of Missing Persons And Femicides Trigger A Wave Of Demonstrations

Mexican Flag (Unsplash / Jorge Aguilar)

JAKARTA - Women activists and the families of missing persons victims held a demonstration at the Office of the Mexican Human Rights Commission. They demand justice from the government regarding the number of cases of kidnapping and murdering women or femicides.

Launching CNA, Tuesday, September 8, the mass of the demonstration was dominated by masked female activists. In their action they asked the government to step in to find missing people and cut the chain of violence against women.

The demonstrators' disappointment was unstoppable when staging a demonstration. Their anger spilled over to destroy the office signboard with hammers while pasting several banners and posters. The crowd was upset that Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had rebuked them the day before.

The rebuke came because the activists appeared to have tampered with the image of former Mexican President Francisco Madero. "Those who tarnish Madero's image, or don't know his history, are doing it unconsciously," said Lopez Obrador.

Therefore, the activists criticized Lopez Obrador for the wrong address. "How can you be angry about this picture, but not about how my own daughter was being abused?" said one woman activist.

The demonstration has also demanded the investigation of cases of 70 thousand people missing since 2006 as a result of the war between the drug cartels. Not only that, the Mexican Authority also stated that the number of femicides had increased by 5.4 percent in the first seven months of this year, especially July. Recorded, the murder of women reached 74 people that month.