MEXICO.- Through a statement issued by the Mexican Senate, the Nueva Alianza party legislator, Monica Arriola Gordillo, reported 2014 as the year with the most forced or unexplained disappearances in Mexico since 2007, where the average was 54 people per week going missing, making it a total of 22,610 disappeared citizens to this date.

This year alone, reports indicate that a total of 5,098 people went missing, without counting those who weren't reported to the authorities, such as immigrants, homeless people and isolated communities.

The senator placed the blame of these figures to the current administration of Mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto, saying that the increase in crimes of this nature could be linked to the complicity between the State and organized crime, as it recently was in Ayotzinapa and Cocula.

To address the problem, the senator requested a reform to articles 215A and 215C of the Federal Penal Code regarding the "force disappearance" or kidnapping of people, where it proposes harsher punishments for criminals that refuse to provide information regarding the whereabouts of their victims.

At the same time, she detailed the measures that should be taken against officials that are found to be associated with crimes like these. The permanent and irrevocable removal of public officials in organized crime will also guarantee that they will never be able to have a related position in government. Not even as private security employees.

Currently, the bill is pending a vote and approval, as it was informed by the current Legislature in the Senate, and it's waiting to be reviewed by the unified committee of Justice and Legislative Studies.

Although there have been several clandestine mass graves found in different areas of the state of Guerrero, this region still does not appear as one of the least safe states in Mexico, given that the states with the largest number of reports throughout the whole Republic were Tamaulipas, Jalisco, Mexico State, Distrito Federal and Coahuila, according to data from the National Data Registry of Lost or Missing Persons (Registro Nacional de Datos de Personas Extraviadas o Desaparecidas, RNPED, in Spanish).

According to the database, even Baja California reported more force disappearances than Guerrero from August 2011 to August 2014.

Source: Coordinación de Comunicación Social

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