PBI-Mexico accompanies formation of International Solidarity Committee in disappearance of Edmundo Reyes and Gabriel Cruz

On December 9, PBI-Mexico tweeted:

“Yesterday we accompanied the formation of the International Solidarity Committee with the families and accompanying organizations in the case of #Forced Disappearance of Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sánchez.”

The International Committee includes Jasmin Hristov from the University of Guelph; Bertha Oliva of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH); Camille Landry of the School of Human Rights of the Alliance for Global Justice;  Orfe Castillo of the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders; and Colombian lawyer Gustavo Enrique Gallardo among others.

On December 8, the Cerezo Committee posted:

“Within the framework of December 10, International Human Rights Day, we announce to Mexican and international society the formation of the International Committee of Solidarity with the families and accompanying organizations in the case of the Forced Disappearance of Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sánchez.

As is well known, on May 25, 2007, in the city of Oaxaca, Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sánchez, members of the Popular Democratic Revolutionary Party- Popular Revolutionary Army (PDR) were arrested and disappeared by various police and military groups. PDPR-EPR).

To date, family members, together with popular and human rights organizations, have not stopped demanding the presentation alive of both social fighters and the trial and punishment of those responsible for the material and masterminds, as well as the facilitators and beneficiaries of this crime of Condition.

The creation of the Special Search Commission, formally constituted on November 3 of this year, is an achievement of relatives, legal representation, and human and popular rights organizations, after 15 years of fighting for the presentation alive of Edmundo and Gabriel. With this, a new stage begins in the fight for truth, memory, justice, comprehensive reparation and measures of non-repetition.

Faced with this new stage of struggle and given the 15 years of obstacles and government negligence that have arisen to guarantee the rights of the victims and in the face of the criminalization of family members and human and popular rights organizations, it is necessary to continue and reinforce the accompaniment and international solidarity towards the families and national organizations that accompany the case.

We announce to the national and international public opinion that 16 organizations of relatives of victims of forced disappearance and solidarity personalities who have fought to eradicate forced disappearance in Latin America and the world have decided to accompany the work of the relatives of Edmundo and Gabriel and accompanying organizations in this new stage, as a result of the judgment of the SCJN [Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation] and the consequent creation of the Special Search Commission.”

PBI-Mexico began to accompany the Cerezo Committee in 2002.