Mexico is Kidnapping King
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- Mexico has overtaken Colombia and Brazil to become the world leader in reported kidnappings, a leading, private anti-crime
group said Wednesday.
Investigators across the country reported 194 kidnappings from January through June, compared to 172 abductions registered during the same period by
Colombian Defense Secretary officials and 169 reported kidnappings in Brazil, according to Jose Antonio Ortega, president of the Citizen Council for
Public Safety.
"This is nothing to be proud of, it's an embarrassment," Ortega said at a news conference. "It's an embarrassment for authorities who have tried to
convince us crime statistics are falling."
The vast majority of kidnappings in Mexico go unreported because of fears about police corruption and incompetence, and the possible involvement of
authorities in many abductions. Often, family members of kidnapping victims fail to ask even presumably more-trustworthy federal authorities to
investigate because of worries their loved ones could be killed during botched rescue attempts.
The reported number of kidnappings likely do not reflect the actual number of abductions in Colombia or Brazil either, as both countries have long
struggled with corruption and mistrust of authorities similar to those in Mexico.
In a case so brazen that it shocked many in this crime-wary nation, a group of gunmen last month forced Argentina-born Ruben Omar Romano, the coach of
the Mexican League's Cruz Azul soccer squad, from his BMW as he left the team's practice facility in southern Mexico City.
Romano's abduction has become indicative of how most kidnappings here go, however, with authorities in the capital pledging not to become directly
involved because the coach's family has not sought their help.
Ortega's group obtained the tallies it released Wednesday by searching databases for kidnappings reported by police in Mexico City and each of the
country's 31 states. To a total of 155 cases nationwide, officials added an extra 39 kidnappings that federal agents have said they were
investigating.
Contacted Wednesday, Mexico's attorney general's office, which investigates kidnappings involving organized crime, offered no immediate comment on the
independent report.
So far this year, federal prosecutors have received reports of 87 kidnappings, arrested 72 alleged kidnappers and fully dismantled 11 kidnapping
organizations.
The Citizen Council for Public Safety, which organized a massive "march of silence" through the streets of Mexico City last summer to call attention
to skyrocketing crime rates, said 76 reported kidnappings so far this year in the nation's capital mean that abductions per capita here outranked
those reported in Bogota, Colombia, or Sao Paulo, Brazil.
It reported that 10 kidnap victims have died after being abducted in Mexico City since January, compared to 24 over the same period in Bogota,
according to available statistics.
"To me it seems that Colombia has begun to get a handle on the situation because, in Colombia, crime is going down, kidnappings are going down,
violence is going down, despite the fact they are at war," Ortega said.
A civil war pitting large guerrilla groups -- some financed by the cocaine trade -- against government forces has raged for 40 years in Colombia.
Ortega said that instead of working to put kidnappers behind bars and weed out the corrupt police officers and officials who protect them, Mexican
officials preferred to point to incomplete statistics and insist that the crime rate has gone down.
"Things are very grave," he said. "The country is breaking down and there's no one in charge."
The SAME boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. It's about what you are made of NOT the circumstance.
|
![[*]](images/xmbforum/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
