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View Full Version : The Missing 43: Mexico's Disappeared Students (Full Length)



Tribe
4th March 2015, 08:04
http://youtu.be/0jt-urgNN3A


warning some footage may cause distress
Published on Nov 28, 2014
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On September 26, students from the Teachers College of Ayotzinapa in Mexico en route to a protest in Iguala were intercepted by police forces. In the ensuing clash, six students were fatally shot and 43 were abducted. Investigations over the following weeks led to the startling allegations that the police had acted at the behest of the local mayor, and had turned over the abducted students to members of the Guerreros Unidos cartel. All 43 students are now feared dead.

The case has come to represent the negative feeling of the Mexican public toward the state of justice and the rule of law in Mexico. The events have now galvanized the survivors of the attack and the disappeared students' parents. Nationwide demonstrations have increased in intensity, and recently led to government buildings in the state of Guerrero to be set on fire.

VICE News travels to Guerrero, ground-zero for the protest movement that has erupted since the disappearance of the students. We meet with survivors of the Iguala police attack and parents of the missing students, accompany volunteer search parties, and watch as protests against the government and president reach boiling point.

Check out "In Photos: Demonstrations for Missing Students Swell in Mexico and Across the World" - http://bit.ly/1uK1HgF

Check out "Officials Say the 43 Students Missing In Mexico Were Incinerated" - http://bit.ly/15I1shA

Check out "Ayotzinapa: A Timeline of the Mass Disappearance That Has Shaken Mexico" - http://bit.ly/1sJtnS4

Watch "Cocaine & Crude (Full Length)" - http://bit.ly/1FCJ8Dh

Check out the VICE News beta for more: http://vicenews.com

Tribe
4th March 2015, 08:11
Basically the students were training to be teachers of schools that follow a very different economic model of what the government in Mexico want .

Ria
4th March 2015, 08:52
Basically the students were training to be teachers of schools that follow a very different economic model of what the government in Mexico want .

I completely agree with you.

Tribe
4th March 2015, 08:53
i have a deep sadness for the state of Mexico , such a beautiful land so corrupted ! xx

and when i mean state of Mexico , i mean the state it is in x

Tribe
4th March 2015, 09:01
such rich history so much potential once tptb stop the charade ! x

Tribe
4th March 2015, 09:46
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03218/mexico_students_1_3218708b.jpgWhy do the missing students matter?
The fate of the students is seen as being a symbol of the corruption, violence and impunity that has long besmirched Mexico.
Mr Peņa Nieto came to power in 2012 promising to break with the old ways - his predecessor, Felipe Calderon, declared war on the drugs cartels in 2006, and 60,000 people died as a result.
The current resident of Los Pinos, the presidential seat, said that he would reform the local authorities and also target the root causes of the drugs wars, such as the poverty and unemployment that made joining a cartel so attractive. In some aspects he has succeeded; he has been able to pass substantial economic reforms, which will bring long-term benefit.
But his project has been severely damaged by the Iguala tragedy.
And as he makes his state visit to London, critics of his rule have used the opportunity to embarrass the president, and remind him that the students are still missing.


Ahead of Mr Peņa Nieto’s trip, Amnesty wrote to David Cameron and Nick Clegg - both of whom met the Mexican leader - to “ensure that human rights are addressed” at bilateral government meetings. On Monday, the morning of his arrival, they delivered a 14,000-signature petition to the Mexican embassy in London calling on the president to deal with what they termed "the torture crisis".
The petition was housed inside a yellow "piņata" - a traditional Mexican paper container, which usually holds sweets.

What is happening now in Iguala?
Last week, as Mr Peņa Nieto was preparing to travel to the UK, 14 people were killed in Iguala in the space of 72 hours.

Mexican police are well-armed, but sometimes no match for the gangsters (Reuters)
Among them were a pregnant woman stabbed to death; a doctor gunned down; an official killed outside his home; and two young men killed in plain sight in the middle of the town.
Some of the deaths are thought to be the result of turf wars between Guerreros Unidos - the cartel linked to the former mayor, Jose Luis Abarca - and their rivals, Los Rojos. Others died as a consequence of being in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
Iguala sits in the middle of "the golden triangle" - a valuable smuggling area, which includes the port of Acapulco and stretches up towards Mexico City. As a result the state has the highest murder rate in Mexico: 63 people per 100,000 – over three times the national average.
At the beginning of December the new gendarmerie were deployed to Acapulco - the force is a pillar of Mr Pena Nieto's plan to enforce law and order across the country, and cleanse the corrupt existing forces. But since their arrival, the bloodletting has continued unabated, with 137 murders in the last three months.
But some of the deaths are certainly linked to the September 26 abductions.
On February 13 an activist campaigning for answers to the Iguala scandal, Norma Angelica Bruno Roman, 26, was shot dead in front of her children by gunmen who rode past on a motorbike. She was attending a funeral for another Iguala victim when she was killed.

full article
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/mexico/11447419/What-has-happened-to-the-missing-Mexican-students-and-why-does-it-matter.html

Tribe
4th March 2015, 09:59
i stumbled upon this video this morning as i was scrolling through youtube looking for something else , it touched me greatly and i wanted to share it , then i find that today Enrique Peņa Nieto, the president of Mexico, is in London for a three-day state visit. .. synchronistic? coincidental ? .. Meant to be ! i think awareness and prayers for this country and these poor victims of such low level behaviours is greatly needed . please send your light to them ! Tribe xx

Tribe
4th March 2015, 18:07
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Investigators are now certain that 43 college students missing since September were killed and incinerated after they were seized by police in southern Guerrero state, the Mexican attorney general said Tuesday.

It was the first time Jesus Murillo Karam said definitely that all were dead, even though Mexican authorities have DNA identification for only one student and a declaration from a laboratory in Innsbruck, Austria, that it appears impossible to identify the others.

The attorney general cited confessions and forensic evidence from an area near a garbage dump where the Sept. 26 crime occurred that showed the fuel and temperature of the fire were sufficient to turn 43 bodies into ashes.


"The evidence allows us to determine that the students were kidnapped, killed, burned and thrown into the river," Murillo Karam said in a press conference that included a video reconstruction of the mass slaying and of the investigation into the case.

He added that "there is not a single shred of evidence that the army intervened ... not a single shred of evidence of the participation of the army," as relatives of the victims have claimed.

Murillo Karam's explanation seemed unlikely to quell the controversy and doubts about the case, in which the federal government has been criticized for acting slowly and callously. Thousands of people demonstrated in Mexico City Monday night, demanding the students be returned alive.

"They pretty much gave the same story as they had given two months ago. There are not many additional details," said analyst Alejandro Hope. "They are searching for closure but I'm not sure they're going to get it."

The attorney general has come under attack from many quarters, including the students' relatives and fire experts, who say the government's version of what happened is implausible. Family members are still searching in hopes of finding the students alive.

The Argentine Forensic Anthropologists, an independent team hired by parents to work with federal investigators, told The Associated Press on Sunday that there is still not "sufficient evidence" to link the charred remains found by authorities in a river in the town of Cocula to what happened at the garbage dump.

Valentin Cornelio Gonzalez, 30, brother-in-law of missing student Abel Garcia Hernandez, said the shifting theories of what happened to the students have left him and other family members not believing anything that officials say.

"On a personal level, it makes me mad because this is what they've always done," he said of Tuesday's announcement. "There's no chance that the parents are going to believe the PGR (saying) that they're dead. ... They are going to look for them alive."

Murillo Karam said the conclusion was made based on the testimony of a key suspect arrested two weeks ago, Felipe Rodriguez Salgado, who said he was called to get rid of the students. There are also 39 confessions. Based on samples of gasoline, diesel and steel from burned tires, he said, they concluded that the amount of heat from the fire and the location could have kept the blaze going for hours, and that the remains were crushed afterward.

Authorities say they were burned the night of Sept. 26 and over the next day, and their incinerated remains were bagged up and thrown into a nearby river. The remains in the bags found in the river had traces of the garbage dump where the fire occurred, Murillo Karam added.

The scene of the crime was an 800-meter (yard) ravine that resembled a furnace, said criminal investigations chief Tomas Zeron.

Murillo Karam said the information was based as well on 386 declarations, 487 forensic tests, 16 raids and two reconstructions.

So far 99 people have been detained in connection with the crime, including the former mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca.

Murillo Karam said the motive was that the members of a local gang, the Guerreros Unidos, believed the young men were rival gang members when they hijacked some public transit buses in Iguala. But many of the suspects testified that they knew the men were students. The students, known for commandeering buses and taking over toll booths to support their leftist causes, said they were taking the buses for transport to an upcoming demonstration in Mexico City.

"They thought they were infiltrated," Murillo Karam said at the press conference, adding that there is no indication that the students were part of any criminal group.

The case has sparked protests inside and outside Mexico over the four months since the students disappeared, and has forced the Mexican government to turn its attention from touting economic and education reforms to dealing with the country's crime and insecurity problems.

Hope, the analyst, said the protests will likely continue as long as there is no unimpeachable evidence that the remains belong to the students. Also unclear are questions such as why the gang members thought the students were rivals, and why they would have killed them even after learning that wasn't the case.

"We know the who, the what, the when and the where. We don't know the why," Hope said. "They have yet to tell a compelling story of why this happened. It doesn't matter how many people they detain — unless they answer that question, the whole thing will remain under a halo of mystery."