Mexican organization Tejiendo Redes Infancia denounced that the Attorney General's Office of Michoacán (FGE) violated the law by making public the identity and face of a 17-year-old adolescent, also pointing to him as the material author of the murder of Uruapan's mayor, Carlos Manzo. "We see with great concern the deplorable illegal act committed by the Michoacán Prosecutor's Office (...) when they exhibited the human remains and the identity of a child who was both a victim and a perpetrator in the murder of Mayor Carlos Manzo; which is a painful expression of childhood recruitment into criminal groups," stated Juan Martín Pérez García, a representative of the organization. He also affirmed that the state authority failed to comply with the General Law on the Rights of Girls, Boys and Adolescents (LGDNNA), which establishes the obligation to protect the identity of minors linked to a crime, whether as victims or presumed perpetrators, in order to prevent their public identification. Tejiendo Redes Infancia asked the media not to replicate the images and personal data of the adolescent "so as not to join in the violation of the law." In addition, they asked the Michoacán Prosecutor's Office "to withdraw all material disseminated and offer a public apology to the child and his family." At a press conference, state prosecutor Carlos Torres Piña disclosed the minor's full name, images of the body, and the face of the young man, whom he identified as Víctor "N." He also stated that "the expert reports confirmed the hypothesis of material authorship" and mentioned that relatives would have recognized the adolescent's addiction to methamphetamine, which was observed as an act of revictimization. Tejiendo Redes recalled that international organizations have been urging the Mexican State for over a decade to criminalize and prevent the recruitment and use of minors by criminal groups, as well as to implement rescue, disengagement, and care programs, with insufficient results. The organization insisted on a call to the media to maintain coverage within the law and the protection of childhood. You may be interested>Identify the murderer of Carlos Manzo as Víctor Manuel, 17 years old. According to the Network for the Rights of Children in Mexico (REDIM), Michoacán is one of the states with the highest risk of forced recruitment of girls, boys, and adolescents due to the criminal dispute in the region. This situation increases the participation of young people in violent events and their subsequent criminalization, which turns this case into an urgent alert about childhood involved in violence.
