Several protests were held in different parts of México on Friday amid a wave of indignation over the case of Debanhi Escobar, who was found dead inside a water tank at a motel in the northern state of Nuevo León nearly two weeks after going missing.
A protest was held at the headquarters of the Attorney General’s Office in México City, where a small group of women placed flowers and photographs of women who had gone missing or been murdered, including Debanhi, on the building’s windows.
“This, this intervention is short-lived, it goes away, but our daughters, our relatives, our sisters do not return, that is not temporary. And it’s not that they disappear, someone takes them away, they kidnap them,” said Araceli Osorio, whose daughter, Lesvy Osorio, was killed and tied to a public telephone booth in an area near the School of Engineering of the National Autonomous University of México in 2017.
In Monterrey, capital of the border state of Nuevo León, some 1,500 people, mostly women, marched calling for explanations on Debanhi’s death.
Feminists and groups of families of missing persons blocked one of the main avenues in the heart of the city to demand justice for Debanhi’s death.
They also demanded that the 22 women who have been missing since the beginning of 2021 be located.
Almost at the same time as the protests were taking place, the attorney general’s office of Nuevo León announced at a press conference that the 18-year-old died due to a “deep contusion on the skull.”
On Thursday night, the attorney general’s office announced that they had found a body in the water tank of a motel near the place where she was last seen.
On Apr. 9, Debanhi attended a party and then left in a cab, from which she got down to stay on a road that goes from Monterrey to Nuevo Laredo.
The cab driver took a photograph of the young woman on the road that went viral.
In a press conference on Friday morning, Debanhi’s father said that CCTV coverage from the cameras of hotels and companies located in the area shows the cab driver reaching out to fondle Debanhi’s breasts which led him to believe she got out of the car to flee.
He added that he no longer trusted the state’s prosecutor, Rodolfo Salinas since he asked him to leave the area where the investigations were being conducted only to call him shortly after to tell him that they had found a body there.
There are many doubts surrounding the case, including how the body appeared in a place that had allegedly been searched before and around which the investigation centered or why Debanhi’s parents did not have access to the photos of the motel or why the cab driver is still free in a state that is experiencing a wave of disappearances of young women and teenagers.
Another protest has been called on Sunday, also to demand answers from the authorities on Debanhi’s case.
More than 10 women are murdered in México every day.
In 2021, over 1,000 women were killed in gender violence.
Nuevo León state has registered a wave of disappearances this year with at least 30 women still missing.
TYT Newsroom
