15) AYOTZINAPA INVESTIGATION CONTINUING

 

            Mexican investigators say that two recently found bodies do not belong to any of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers' college who disappeared in September 2014 in the southern state of Guerrero.

 

            The bodies were found last month during a search operation between the town of Cocula and Iguala, the city where local police attacked and then abducted the students who they allegedly handed over to a local drug trafficking gang.

 

            Attorney General Arely Gómez informed parents of the disappeared students about the new findings at a private meeting which was also attended by a group of independent experts set up by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights to follow the case. His office says it has been "determined that the human remains found in Cocula do not belong to any of the 43 students disappeared in Iguala."

 

            The disappearance of the students sparked a national protest movement, fueled by a government investigation which concluded that the victims were incinerated in a garbage dump on the same night they were abducted. Experts provided a detailed critique of that investigation in a report released last September.

 

            Growing pressure on the government eventually led to the relaunching of the official investigation in December. But while the Ayotzinapa case may be moving forward, the numbers of new forced disappearances keep piling up.

 

            Five men and a 16-year-old girl disappeared in the southern state of Veracruz on the Jan. 9-10 weekend in the town of Tierra Blanca. Video footage shows the victims being abducted by state police officers, who were not arrested until relatives of the missing began to make noise in the media.

 

            Mexican and international human rights groups and officials have been drawing attention to the failure of the authorities to resolve the crisis of disappearances that began to take off in the context of the country's drug wars. An Amnesty International report on enforced disappearances in Mexico released on Jan. 14 says there is a lack of skills and political will to solve the problem.

 

            "The investigations do not appear to be aimed at uncovering the truth about what happened, the authorities responses are limited to carrying out actions that contribute little to the inquiry," the report says. "This type of investigation appears to consist of merely going through the motions, and appears to be destined from the outset to lead nowhere."

 

            According to official statistics there are currently about 27,000 missing people in Mexico. An undetermined number are victims of forced disappearance, in which state actors are involved.

 

            (Based on a Vice News report by Alan Hernandez.)

 

(The above article is from the February 15-29, 2016, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)