Parents of Mexico’s 43 missing students stage hunger strike
The parents of the 43 Mexican students who went missing last year have staged a hunger strike ahead of a meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto to follow up on the case of their children.
They announced the start of their 43-hour hunger strike at 7:00 p.m. (0000 GMT) on Wednesday after assembling in Mexico City’s historic Zocalo Square.
“For 43 hours, we will only drink water and we’ll be fasting when we meet with the president,” said Nardo Flores, whose son Bernardo is among the missing.
“I don’t know if I can handle the fasting. I’m diabetic. I’ll do all I can,” said Genovena Sanchez, whose son has also disappeared, adding, “I’m doing this to get my son back.”
The students’ families and Pena Nieto are due to meet on Thursday night in a museum at the city’s Chapultepec Park.
According to Vidulfo Rosales, a lawyer for the parents, they are planning to ask the Mexican president to order a new investigation into the case in the hope of finding their children alive.
The Thursday meeting would be Pena Nieto’s second meeting with the missing students’ parents since the 2014 tragedy, which has had a negative effect on the Mexican leader’s popularity.
“I’m confident that we will have a productive meeting, which will produce agreements to obtain the two main objectives, which are getting to the truth and getting justice,” Roberto Campa, a deputy interior minister said.
Various accounts
The 43 students went missing last September in the city of Iguala in the southern state of Guerrero after being reportedly detained by corrupt police officials.
Prosecutors say police afterward gave the young men, who were from a rural teacher college in Guerrero, to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, adding that the students were killed and their remains were burned by the cartel.
However, independent experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) have questioned the official probe, saying that there is no evidence to support the account that the 43 were burned.
The relatives of the missing student as well as other fellow students are planning to hold a protest in Mexico City on Saturday to commemorate the one-year anniversary of their disappearance.
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