Students call for Mexican president to step down

Chilpancingo (Mexico), Nov 24 (IANS/EFE) A group of students from a teachers' training college, from which 43 of their colleagues went missing and are presumed dead, has called for the resignation of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto within six days.

"President Peña Nieto has six days to resign because the Mexican people want him to, and if he doesn't, then the protests against him will increase all over the country," said one of the students in a broadcast from a radio station the protesters had taken over.

The students issued the demand Sunday after around 100 of them seized control of two radio stations in Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero state, to air messages demanding that the 43 students who went missing after a night of violence Sep 26, be returned alive.

According to the public prosecutor's office, the students were captured by local police and handed over to a criminal group who killed them and burned their bodies.

"We see that neither the army nor the police are doing anything, so we are going to take action ourselves. And if it is necessary, we will go armed," said one of the radio transmissions.

Meanwhile, members of the National Popular Assembly, after a meeting at the Ayotzinapa school in Tixtla, agreed to continue with demonstrations to seek the return of the missing students.

In the meeting, over 100 social organisations and unions agreed to launch a national demonstration Dec 1, the second anniversary of Peña's taking office.

In the region near Iguala, a group of 70 people undertook a search operation Sunday for secret graves at the request of victims' families, and found seven new graves with the remains of people murdered by criminal gangs in recent years.

DNA samples are expected to be taken Tuesday, while the search operation is set to continue until Friday.

Gang violence between three criminal cartels has caused hundreds of deaths and disappearances over the last four years.

--IANS/EFE

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