Protesters jam road demanding Mexico find students

[Judi Lynn]

Oct 8, 5:03 PM EDT

Protesters jam road demanding Mexico find students

By MARK STEVENSON
Associated Press



AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo

CHILPANCINGO, Mexico (AP) -- Tens of thousands of teachers, activists and residents marched and blocked a major highway in the Guerrero state capital Wednesday to protest the disappearance of 43 teachers college students and demand that authorities find them.

The protesters shut down the highway that links Mexico City with Acapulco, marching behind a banner asking "Who governs Guerrero?" - a reference to the fact that local police working with organized crime have been implicated in the disappearances in the city of Iguala.

"Whose hands are we in?" said Rosa Ruth Rodriguez Mendiola, a housewife from the city of Atoyac who joined in the march in Chilpancingo.

Investigators still had no word on whether the 28 bodies found in a mass grave over the weekend included any of the missing students, who disappeared after two attacks allegedly involving Iguala police in which six people were killed and at least 25 wounded.

More:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_MEXICO_VIOLENCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-08-14-28-12

[Judi Lynn]

1. Hundreds of civilian militiamen join search for 43 missing Mexican students

Hundreds of civilian militiamen join search for 43 missing Mexican students
Updated 9 October 2014, 7:22 AEST

Hundreds of civilian militiamen have searched a town in southern Mexico to look for 43 missing students amid fears they have been executed by a gang working with local police.

As the self-defence forces and federal police carried out the search in the town of Iguala, thousands of people protested in Guerrero state capital Chilpancingo to demand justice in a case that has shocked Mexico.

Protests were due to be held in Mexico City to pressure the government of president Enrique Pena Nieto to investigate why gang-linked police attacked the students on September 26.

In Iguala, a town of 140,000 people surrounded by mountains and corn fields, the militiamen climbed a hill, using machetes to cut through vegetation near the site of a mass grave where 28 unidentified bodies were found last weekend.

More:
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2014-10-09/hundreds-of-civilian-militiamen-join-search-for-43-missing-mexican-students/1377075

[Judi Lynn]

2. There's little mystery to this mass grave: Mexico's drug war is killing children

There's little mystery to this mass grave: Mexico's drug war is killing children

Young people are now targeted by the very people sworn to protect them. If this isn’t the ultimate duplicity of abusive law enforcement, what is?

Laura Carlsen
theguardian.com, Tuesday 7 October 2014 13.38 EDT

Many countries prohibit deploying their military for domestic law enforcement: it’s a recipe for violent authoritarian abuse.

But the Obama administration’s prohibitionist drug war is funding and encouraging abuse and brutal, corrupt, mass-grave-level murders throughout Mexico and Central America – enough that even drug-war apologists admit that the appalling increase in human-rights abuses are a result of sending the military and police into communities in the name of anti-trafficking.

In just nine years, the drug war waged by the US and Mexico has created a climate of violence that has claimed more than 100,000 lives throughout the country, many young people – including two horrific massacres and a mass disappearance in the last six months connected to law enforcement nominally tasked with battling the spread of drugs.

An ambush on 26 September, begun by uniformed local police and finished off by an armed commando, left six young people dead and 43 students missing, nearly half of whom were last seen in police custody. Others are battling for their lives in local hospitals (where the possibility of a new attack is considered so high that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ordered precautionary measures for the wounded and the missing). This week, 28 semi-burned bodies were discovered in a mass grave, which authorities say could be the bodies of the missing students. Politicians allied with cartels are blamed for the atrocity.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/07/mass-grave-mexico-drug-war-killing-children

[Judi Lynn]

3. Mexico is an "assassin state," charges human rights activist, saying Iguala tragedy is "not isolated

Published on Tuesday, October 07, 2014
by Common Dreams

Disappearances, Deaths of Leftist Mexican Students Spark Federal Investigation

Mexico is an "assassin state," charges human rights activist, saying Iguala tragedy is "not isolated."

by Lauren McCauley, staff writer

Responding to the discovery of a mass grave thought to contain the bodies of dozens of students who were attacked by local police last month, Mexican federal agents on Monday were dispatched to the city of Iguala in southern Guerrero state to investigate the scene.

On September 26, two busloads of students from a local teachers college, the Raúl Isidro Burgos Ayotzinapa Normal School, were attacked. According to surviving students who were interviewed by VICE News, local Iguala police and other armed men "surrounded and confronted the buses on the outskirts of Iguala," and opened fire.

After the gunfire, six students were dead and dozens of the survivors fled the scene or were detained; forty-three have been declared missing. On October 5, authorities said they had discovered mass graves containing the burned remnants of "at least" 28 bodies thought to be the missing students. However, proper identification through genetic testing could take up to two months, say officials.

President Enrique Peña Nieto called the deaths "outrageous, painful and unacceptable" and said that he had ordered a newly created preventative unit of the federal security forces to take over security in the city, "find out what happened and apply the full extent of the law to those responsible."

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/10/07/disappearances-deaths-leftist-mexican-students-spark-federal-investigation