Ei-iE

Six Education International affiliates from the Americas are joining forces to file a UN human rights complaint on behalf of the disappeared 43 Mexican student teachers and related rights violations of 137 others.

Together, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Confederation of Education Workers of the Argentine Republic, Brazil’s National Confederation of Education Workers, Unión Nacional de Educadores, Colegio de Profesores de Chile, and the Colombian Federation of Education Workers are demanding answers to the yet unsolved violent “events in and around the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college in September 2014.” The complaint lays blame directly on local police and organised crime for carrying out the violations.

“We, a community of educators, who represent thousands who have been victims of similar atrocities in our own countries, are compelled to raise our voices for our 43 colleagues who have been silenced. These innocent students who had chosen to dedicate their adult years to the education and development of young people in their communities were summarily removed by the very government in whose service they aspired to be employed. The government must take responsibility and answer the question: What happened to them?” read the joint letter submitted to the human rights body.

“In filing this complaint, we call upon the United Nations Human Rights Council to expedite remedial action with the government of Mexico to prosecute those responsible and come forward with an attested record of the fate of the 43 disappeared young educators. Let the memory of their suffering be respected and not forgotten.”

In the official complaint to the UN Human Rights Council and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, filed 26 September in New York, the unions have called into question the following acts:

·43 normalistas arrested from two separate crime scenes and later subjected to enforced disappearances; ·Six extrajudicial executions, including individuals whose remains indicated clear evidence of torture and summary execution from point-blank range; ·Over 40 individuals wounded at one particular crime scene; ·30 individuals who survived assassination attempts as another crime scene; ·Roughly 80 individuals, including students and teachers, who endured persecution, attacks, and assassination attempts after expressing support for victims the above crimes.

With the support of over 750 documents submitted by various organisations, including, but not limited to, Amnesty International, the UNHCR, and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the unions are demanding that Mexican officials become more transparent and make details of the ongoing investigation public.