Human Rights Commission Says Final Count of Clandestine Graves Remain a Mystery The Associated Press
go to original April 7, 2017

Over the years, thousands of people have disappeared in Mexico because of drug-related violence. Families frustrated with a lack of answers are taking matters into their own hands. As Al Jazeera's Natasha Ghoneim reports from Veracruz, some are digging up mass graves to try and find their loved ones. (Al Jazeera)

Mexico's government human rights agency said this week that tens of thousands of people have been recorded as missing across the country over the past two decades. And thousands have been reported found in clandestine graves during the drug war of the past 10 years.

But the National Human Rights Commission says the exact numbers are a mystery.

It asked prosecutors in all 31 states how many people had gone missing since 1995, and came up with a tentative figure of 32,236, higher than previous estimates of 29,903. But it's unclear how many among the latest figure may have been located.

Some states didn't answer when asked how many clandestine graves had been found since 2007, but those that did reported 855 pits containing 1,548 bodies. Only about half of those bodies have been identified.

The commission said Thursday that press accounts indicated 1,143 pits had been found nationwide, containing 3,230 bodies.

Read the rest at ABC News

Related: Mass Graves Have Been a Longstanding and Grisly Hallmark of Mexico's Drug War (Business Insider)

Related: A Country of Graves: Nothing Happens in Mexico Where Every Day Is a Day of the Dead (Mexico Voices)

Related: Mexico Drug War Investigators Unearth 47 More Skulls in Mass Graves (Reuters)

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