Mexico opens disputed memorial for drug war victims
6 April AFP
Mexico opened a memorial Friday honoring tens of thousands of victims
of a brutal drug war, but the garden of towering steel walls has been
rejected by some relatives of the dead and missing. Built with funds
seized from drug cartels, the memorial was built during the
administration of president Felipe Calderon, whose six-year term ended
in December and was marked by an escalation of the violence.
Although it was completed months ago, the $2.4 million monument was
only unveiled on Friday in a park of the sprawling Mexican capital, well
after Calderon left office. "This memorial remembers not only those who
are gone, but also those who are still here," said Alejandro Marti,
founder of the Mexico SOS group whose teenage son was murdered in 2008.
With President Enrique Pena Nieto traveling in Asia, the government was
represented by Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, who is
leading a new security strategy focused on reducing the daily violence
plaguing the population.
"This place is a reminder that we must accelerate our efforts to
close any space for violence and impunity," Osorio Chong said. The
memorial has divided victim rights' groups, with prominent peace
activist and poet Javier Sicilia refusing to attend the ceremony because
it is next to a military base and lacks the names of the dead and
disappeared.
Marti argued that the memorial has no names because there is no
official list of the missing, but that there is space to add
them.Sicilia founded the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity
after his 24-year-old son was murdered two years ago. He was a critic of
Calderon's drug war strategy, saying the 2006 deployment of troops was
partly to blame for the burst of violence that left 70,000 dead in six
years.
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