Mexico City, September 3 (RHC)-- Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, has announced that on September 26th he will meet with the parents of the 43 Ayotzinapa students, on the fourth anniversary of their disappearance.
"I have the commitment of receiving the families of the young students of Ayotzinapa, I don't know exactly where," AMLO said during a press conference in Mexico City. The reunion has been arranged by the parents of the 43 disappeared students, with Alejandro Encinas, the future Human Rights undersecretary.
In late July, the relatives of the 43 students expressed the need to have an independent investigation opened, calling on AMLO and the new administration for help in the case. "We have been looking for our children for 46 months and seeking justice and truth, and they (the Mexican Government) have only told us lies. That is why we are asking the new government to help us find the truth and resume the investigation of the GIEI (Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Expert) in order to find the whereabouts of our children," Felipe de la Cruz, spokesman for the 43 students' relatives said.
During the presidential election campaign AMLO, who will assume the presidency in December, was the only candidate who met with the Ayotzinapa students' relatives as well as visited the Iguala city, in the southern state of Guerrero, where the 43 disappeared.
AMLO's statement on this subject comes a day after the Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, Aug. 30, and amid a renewed controversy in the case, as the outgoing President Enrique Peña Nieto posted a video on Twitter declaring that "there was clear and convincing evidence that very sadly the 43 young people had been incinerated by a criminal group."
Mexico's Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) performed the investigation quoted by President Peña Nieto, which concluded that organized mafias had kidnapped, incinerated and thrown in a dumpster the 43 students. This official version, given by the PGR and sustained by the national government is commonly known as "the historical truth."
The official version has been denounced by several national and foreign human rights groups. GIEI, the United Nations Human Rights Commission, the Collegiate Court of the Judicial Power of Mexico, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) are among the ones that have openly denounced the state’s story, uniting with the victimized families in their call for justice.
The Argentinean Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), which participated in an independent investigation of the case requested by the relatives of the young students, dismissed the allegations claimed by President Peña Nieto in his Twitter video.
"On the International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearances, the EAAF expresses its support for the expansion of the investigation into the 43 missing students so that they (their relatives) can be given an accurate answer about what happened with their children of the Rural Normal School Raúl Isidro Burgos of Ayotzinapa," the EAAF said in a statement.
On September 26, 2014, students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers' School of Ayotzinapa went to Iguala, Guerrero, for a political event where they were confronted and kidnapped by local police.
