Missing Mexican missing students' parents call for justice

Mexico City, Dec 25 (IANS/EFE) The parents of the 43 students missing in Mexico Wednesday called upon the international community not to forget their children and to pressure the government to provide answers to the fate of their loved ones after three months of uncertainty.

In a video posted on the social networks, the parents of the students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School, in southern Guerrero state recalled that last Christmas they had had a happy celebration together with their children.

This Christmas, however, there will be no celebrating for anyone, including the Mexican government, from whom the parents demanded results in the search for the missing students.

The 43 students disappeared on the night of Sep 26 after being attacked several times by municipal police on the orders of the then-mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, resulting in six deaths and 25 people wounded.

According to the government investigation, the students were detained by police and handed over to members of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel, who allegedly murdered them and burned their bodies at a trash dump in the area, a version that the parents do not believe.

It will be "a very sad Christmas" without his son, said Epifanio Alvarez, the father of Jorge Alvarez Nava, one of the missing students. "They were taken away alive and we want them back alive," he said.

"Our authorities haven't done anything" to recover the students, said Maria Inez Abrajan, the aunt of Adan Abrajan, urging the international community to demand that the national government provide a solution to the problems being experienced by Mexican municipalities.

--IANS/EFE

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