Mexican students disappeared, other human rights abuses

This video from the USA says about itself:

Guilty? Government Officials Flee As Thousands Protest Disappearance Of 43 Students

8 November 2014

“Tens of thousands of people marched down Mexico City’s main boulevard Wednesday evening to protest the disappearance of 43 young people in the south of the country and demand the government find them.

The largely young crowd carried Mexican flags with black mourning bands replacing the red and green stripes, counting off the numbers from one to 43. Protesters also chanted: “They took them away alive, and alive we want them back.”

In Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero state, groups of protesters angry about the government’s inability to find the missing used hijacked trucks to block all three highways leading into the city for several hours.”

By Jeremy Corbyn in Britain:

Disgrace of the narco state

Thursday 20th November 2014

The escalating human rights abuses in Central America are caused by the insatiable appetite for drugs in the US, writes JEREMY CORBYN

THREE weeks ago, 43 students boarded a coach from their college in Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero in Mexico. They never completed their journey.

What exactly happened remains unclear but it appears that the first six were shot by police after the bus was stopped.

The outrageous disappearance of these students comes on top of the thousands who have disappeared in Mexico in the past 10 years as part of the “war on drugs.”

From the Mexican government’s point of view the situation has gone from bad to worse.

Police instructed to search for the missing students have discovered more and more unmarked graves.

Every new horror is then DNA tested, but so far none of the missing 43 have been found.

These newly discovered graves are very often the bodies, often burnt, of desperate Central American migrants trying to cross Mexico to get to the United States in order to survive economically, and send money back to their families in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The 43 students who lost their lives were on their way to a demonstration and apparently the mayor of Iguala ordered police to prevent them from travelling because he thought they were going to heckle his wife who was due to speak at an event.

He and his wife were subsequently arrested in Mexico City, but huge questions remain over the link between the police and Mexico’s notorious narco gangs.

Suspicions have been raised about the inability of Mexican federal authorities to either protect people or to unmask the culprits of this atrocious attack.

Demonstrations have been held all over the country and last Saturday at the famous Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAN) were met with robust and brutal action by police.

While the stories of disappearances in Mexico are now gaining more publicity internationally, it is important to look at neighbouring countries too.

In Honduras there have been 60,000 homicides since the start of this decade. Honduras has a population of just eight million — giving it one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Looking more deeply into the figures, it’s also clear that individuals who stand for justice are in greater danger than anyone else.

Since the coup of 2009, 29 journalists, 74 lawyers and 90 LGBT people have been killed.

Additionally 92 activists in the Bajo Aguan area have been killed in land disputes, as farmers have lost their land to a World Bank-funded modernisation programme.

In the case of neighbouring Guatemala there is a similar history of human rights abuses but, like all countries in Central America, many of the population rely on family remittances from the US.

The growth of nationalism and anti-immigrant feeling in the US has enabled the Obama administration to deport over one million people since he came to office.

There are 1,000 people per week arriving back in Guatemala, so that’s 1,000 families losing any remittance income, and 1,000 more people competing for work.

Fundamentally, Central American human rights abuses result from the insatiable appetite for Class A drugs in the US. The very well-funded and organised narco gangs are able to corrupt police forces and the whole political system.

And it’s the poorest, most vulnerable and most politically active who suffer the brunt of this.

This year’s Latin American conference will be held on November 29 at Congress House, 23-28 Great Russell St, London WC1B 3LS. You can register via www.latinamerica2014.org.uk.