Mexico City, Feb 15 (EFE).- The Mexico office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Thursday condemned the murder of Noé Sandoval, a father who was searching for his missing son, Kevin, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero.
Sandoval, who died in a hospital after being shot at from a motorcycle, had been searching for his 16-year-old son since November and was a member of the “María Herrera Families in Search” collective from the city of Chilpancingo.
He is the second activist murdered in less than a week, after Angelita Mera, leader of the organization “Union and Strength for Our Disappeared of Tecate,” was assassinated in northern Mexico, near the border with the United States.
Three weeks ago, Lorenza Cano, an activist with the collective “Together in Search of the Disappeared,” was kidnapped by armed men who killed her husband and son in their home in central Mexico, while she is still missing.
The National Search Brigade, a civic group, issued a statement Thursday saying Sandoval’s murder “occurred amid an escalation of violence” in Chilpancingo, the capital of the state of Guerrero.
“The murders, disappearances, attacks and threats against searchers must stop immediately. They have become commonplace in recent years and cannot continue with total impunity,” she added.
In Mexico there are 114,000 missing persons, according to the National Commission for the Search, although the government of Andres Manuel López Obrador is working on a new census that would reduce the official figure. EFE
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