Missing Mexican Students: Protesters Burn Government Buildings in Mexico
Protesters in Mexico burned and destroyed government offices on Monday, demanding that the state governor provide answers on the fate of 43 missing students. They suspected that the students were kidnapped and murdered by corrupt local police.
The students disappeared in September. Since then, protestors held anti-government rallies and discovered mass graves outside Iguala, just over a hundred miles south of Mexico City.
Nearly 200 demonstrators turned violent on Monday as they fought with police. The riot turned into them destroying an office building in the state capital and setting cars and the building on fire.
State Governor, Angel Aguirre told the Washington Post, "I have confidence that we'll find [the students] alive." He expressed his anger towards the protestors, claiming that reports show that the 28 bodies found at the burial sites outside Iguala did not belong to any of the missing students. Some of the graves, he said, were separate victims of organized crime.
Protestors demanded further action from Aguirre, to release the students or provide information about their fate within the next 24 hours. Mexico City federal prosecutors claimed that forensic tests can take weeks or even months, urging the protestors to be patient about the results of the bodies found in Iguala.
The 43 missing students from the rural Ayotzinapa College in Guerreo were last seen in Iguala. They were fundraising and protesting for new education laws. Allegedly, local police and gangsters attacked them when they tried to haul a bus for a ride home and took them away.
The mayor and police chief of Iguala have fled and are suspected to have been involved in the students' disappearance.
According to the International Business Times, the Mexican government offered a reward of 1.5 million pesos for information about the students. Police took over 13 towns in Mexico to increase efforts in finding them.
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