Kin of missing students face repression in Mexico

Iguala (Mexico), Jan 13 (IANS/EFE) Family members and supporters of the 43 students abducted Sep 26 in Mexico faced police repression Monday, while trying to enter an army garrison in the Mexican city of Iguala.

The protesters arrived around 1:00 p.m. at the headquarters of the 27th Infantry Battalion, demanding to be allowed to search the installations for the missing students.

Parents, instructors and classmates of the 43 missing students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School, a teacher's college near Iguala, managed to advance about 15 metres inside the army base before they were violently ejected by riot police.

Three students and the father of one of the missing youths were beaten by the police during the confrontation.

Scores of Ayotzinapa students were assaulted by police in Iguala on the night of Sep 26.

Six people were killed and 25 others wounded, while 43 students were abducted.

According to Mexican authorities, the abducted students were handed over to the local Guerreros Unidos ("United Warriors") crime syndicate and presumably killed.

Families of the students have been unwilling to accept the federal government's account, and blame the ousted Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, who are in custody, for the massacre.

Members of the 27th Battalion witnessed the police attack Sep 26, but did not intervene, and the families of the missing students are demanding a probe into the army's conduct.

After being driven out of the garrison, some of the students commandeered a truck to ram it into the front gate of the army base. On the way back to the Ayotzinapa school in the town of Tixtla in the Guerrero state, the protesters hijacked two trucks and set them on fire.

Respected newsweekly Proceso published last month a story drawing on a confidential Guerrero state government document that points to Mexico's federal police as the perpetrators of the slaughter of the 43 students.

--IANS/EFE

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