Missing students: Mexico prepares for national day of protests

Mexico City, Nov 20 (IANS/EFE) Mexico prepared Thursday for a national day of protest and marches for 43 missing students culminating in the arrival of the three bus convoys that have been travelling across the country demanding justice for the parents of the disappeared youths.

On the day that commemorates the Mexican Revolution of 1910, dozens of protests have been organised in cities across the country to protest the incidents of Sep 26 when police in the southern town of Iguala detained the students at the order of the town mayor and handed them over to a criminal gang.

Members of the gang told police that the students were killed and their bodies burned. What few remains have been found are being analysed by a laboratory in Austria.

But this official version failed to convince family members, who say they will continue fighting for the return of the students until their deaths are proven.

Mexicans living overseas have also called for protests in cities such as Stockholm, Chicago, Paris, Lima, Berlin, Auckland and Melbourne.

In Mexico City, three convoys will arrive carrying the parents and students of the Ayotzinapa Normal Rural School where the missing were training to be teachers.

For Mexicans, the case has roiled politics and society, outraging citizens fed up with everyday violence, corrupt politicians and the alliance between government institutions and criminals.

Although Thursday's protests are meant be peaceful, there is still fear of violence owing to the clashes that occurred two weeks ago when a group of anarchists set fire to the door of the National Palace in Mexico City.

City authorities have cancelled the memorial parade for the Mexican Revolution to avoid any trouble with other protestors, the secretariat of public security of the Mexican federal district said in a briefing note.

--IANS/EFE

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