Parents of Ayoztinapa disappearances camp before Mexican military HQ
Mexico City, Sep 21 (EFE).- Parents of dozens of young people who disappeared from Ayotzinapa in September 2014 and students from the rural school they went to, camped outside the military headquarters in Mexico City, the country’s capital.
The sit-in is expected to last until Monday, when they will have a meeting at the Interior Ministry, or until Tuesday, the nine-year anniversary of the disappearance of the 43 students.
The students and family members placed a tent where they will be camped for the next few days to demand the Mexican Army that the missing information be delivered to find the whereabouts of their classmates.
“We are in the Campo Militar 1 battalion, where the information of all the battalions in the country is found,” said Mario Gonzalez, father of Cesar Manuel Gonzalez, one of the 43 missing students.
“They are nothing more than criminals, cowards with weapons,” said the father, referring not only to what happened on Sep. 26, 2014, but also to all the protection of the army installations where they were installed, which includes wires, spikes, barricades and hundreds of soldiers.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised to solve the case before the end of his term and parents met him Wednesday.
Upon leaving the meeting, they said they demanded that the army deliver the missing documentation on the case and that it could help find the whereabouts of the students. They said they were disappointed by the president’s refusal.
Lopez Obrador said all the information had already been delivered adding that the existence of these missing documents in what was delivered by the army was accredited by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts created by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
The group recently withdrew from the country due to not being able to advance the investigations due to the obstacle posed by the lack of full collaboration of the armed forces in the investigation.
The sit-in takes place on the eve of the ninth anniversary of the disappearances, while pressure grows for Lopez Obrador to fulfill his promise to clarify the case during his term, which involves the release of all information related to the army’s participation in the case, the parents said.
The Truth Commission of the Mexican Government said last year that the incident was a “state crime” in which authorities at all levels participated, including the armed forces.
The Lopez Obrador Government has denied the controversial version of former President Enrique Pena Nieto’s government, the so-called “historical truth,” which said corrupt police officers detained the students and handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos cartel. They are thought to have murdered and incinerated them in the Cocula landfill. EFE
ia/lds
