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Mexico: 30,000 March to Mark 2nd Anniversary of Ayotzinapa Kidnapping

HeadlineSep 27, 2016

In Mexico City, as many as 30,000 people marched Monday to mark the second anniversary of the kidnapping of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. The students were attacked by local police and subsequently went missing. An investigation by a team of international human rights experts has discredited the Mexican government’s account that the students were killed by a local drug gang. The experts instead found evidence state, federal and military personnel were present on the night of the disappearance. The experts have also accused the Mexican government of stonewalling and retaliating against investigators. Last week, a United Nations representative visited the Ayotzinapa school and warned of a “climate of impunity.” This is María de Jesús Tlatempa Bello, the mother of one of the disappeared students, speaking during Monday’s march.

María de Jesús Tlatempa Bello: “We had to radically open our eyes and realize in what world we are living, a world of impunity. In this world of impunity that we live in, they want our sons to be forgotten. But they are not going to succeed, because we are going to keep on with our dignified struggle. We, as mothers and fathers, are going to demand—not ask, but demand—that they present our sons alive, because that is how they took them. The police took them away alive.”

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