Women Murdered in Juarez

International Women's Day  by Clayton Conn Marking international women’s day, mothers and families of disappeared and murdered women marched in Mexico City’s center to demand justice for the victims and an end to the systemic roots of femicide. The country has suffered a contagious effect over the last several years, with femicides and violence toward women rapidly spreading to regions that had previously never seen such violence. Many of the victims and activists hold the government responsible for its complicity or lack of response to the spreading epidemic, which has translated to an impunity rate of 98.5 percent of crimes going unsolved or uninvestigated. This impunity coupled with a drug-war strategy that has left more than 70,000 dead over 6 years, rampant police and military corruption and human rights abuses, as well general insecurity, only picks at the scab of a wound that is growing deeper.  Victims and activists say that it was more than two decades ago that they began ringing the alarm bells of the first cases of femicide in Mexico (mostly in Ciudad Juarez). They say now, 20 years later, that no advances have been made. From: Upside Down World.