Guerrero: Attack on Ayotzinapa students leaves 8 seriously injured and 13 arrested

March to reject attack on student-teachers @El Sur

On 11 November, 8 buses carrying about 150 student-teachers from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Teachers College were stopped by federal, state, and ministerial police as well as the military on the highway between Chilpancingo and Tixtla. According to media, the police attacked the buses three times, leaving 20 students injured and requiring hospitalization, while 8 of these have been seriously injured, and 13 arrested.

According to the Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights, “the units of the different police corporations treated these students cruelly and inhumanely,” detailing that “approximately 5 of these students had their pants forcibly removed by state and ministerial police and were told obscene things and threatened with torture, while others were beaten over the head.” Beyond this, one of the arrested student-teachers who has been released declared that “there is a comrade who has had his leg broken, while another had his lips split by a kick to the face, and others were burned with cigarettes after having been arrested. I was strangled with a scarf and they had me hanging.” In this way, there is information that the police shattered the windows of the buses, fired tear-gas grenades, trapped a group of 7 students in a bus using four gas-grenades, thus preventing their exit for 20 minutes. The students in question were arrested just after escaping.

In reaction to these attacks, some of the student-teachers fled to the mountains. At first, there were reports that 20 students had been disappeared, but these were presented with life at midnight. Beyond this, thanks to social pressure, the arrested were transferred to the Human Rights Commission of Guerrero State, where their injuries were certified, and after which they were released. There have been several marches to reject the violence exercised against the students, such as one that was led by relatives of the 43 student-teachers disappeared on 26 September 2014 together with 500 other student-teachers from Ayotzinapa. For its part, the United Front of Public Teachers Colleges of Guerrero State (FUNPEG) announced the suspension of its dialogue with Governor Héctor Astudillo Flores (PRI), in response to the repressive action. Some of the protests have joined the rejection of the educational reform and the assessment of teachers.

For more information (in Spanish):

Brutalidad policiaca contra estudiantes de la Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa (Tlachinollan, 13 de noviembre de 2015)

Suspenden en Guerrero diálogo con el gobierno; protestan contra represión (La Jornada, 13 de noviembre de 2015)

Normalistas de Oaxaca repudian represión a estudiantes de Ayotzinapa (Proceso, 13 de noviembre de 2015)

Policías persiguen y se enfrentan a normalistas: 8 estudiantes hospitalizados y 12 liberados (Animal Político, 12 de noviembre de 2015)

[México] Después de la brutal agresión policial del 11 de noviembre, aparecen los normalistas que huyeron a los cerros (12 de noviembre de 2015)

Padres de Ayotzinapa y normalistas marchan para protestar por la agresión del miércoles (Sin Embargo, 13 de noviembre de 2015)

For more information from SIPAZ (in English):

Guerrero: Body of tortured and executed Ayotzinapa student, Julio César Mondragón, is exhumed (21 November 2015)

National: Mobilizations within and outside the country for the first anniversary of the forcible disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa (10 October 2015)

Chiapas: Actions for the one-year anniversary of the Ayotzinapa disappearances (8 October 2015)

Guerrero/National: “Fruitless” meeting between relatives of the disappeared from Ayotzinapa and EPN (8 October 2015)