Nineteen months after the disappearance of forty two high school students from the Mexican county of Ayotzinapa, in the State of Guerrero, their relatives and other family members still ignore what happened to their children, while the local, state and national authorities appear to be doing everything possible to keep the incident under a cloak of total darkness.
This week, a report on the incident was issued by the Multidisciplinary Group of Independent Experts, which denies some of the so-called historic truths disseminated by the nation’s General Attorney’s office.
The text points out that there is no scientific evidence that the victims were incinerated at a garbage dump and the ashes thrown at a nearby river and disappearing in the stream.
The specialists determined that it was impossible in those conditions to burn a corpse in full, since a special installation is needed to fulfill that procedure. Since the total of corpses amounted to forty three and no burning stoves were available, such thesis has been discarded by the experts.
The victims’ cell phones were active for days and even weeks after their disappearance, thus rejecting the official version that those instruments were burnt to ashes with their owners.
The Government of President Enrique Pena Nieto not only ordered the members of the unofficial investigating committee to end their work sessions by April 30 next, but directed the non/Mexican members to abandon the country by that date.
According to Bernardo Campos, the father of one of the victims, the relatives of the forty three missing students believe the explanations given by the group of independent experts, because, as he said, the Government has never told the truth.
Now, the father of one of the victims added, the experts have to go NOT because they finished doing their work but because of the lack of political will of the Mexican Presidency to clear up the disappearance of the forty three students and identify, arrest, and prosecute the criminals.
On twenty six September, nineteen fourteen, a group of forty three students that attended a Teachers School in Ayotzinapa county were arrested by municipal policemen of the town of Iguala when they were about to join a street demonstration. The youngsters disappeared without a trace.
All efforts conducted by their relatives to receive a credible version of the disappearance have been useless, while the official investigators issue contradictory versions of the incident, all of them false.
The authorities have refused to allow an inspection of a nearby military base, where it is suspected that the youths were locked and perhaps murdered, a crime committed by the local police supported by criminal drug gangs that openly operate in the area, from where they conduct their illegal activities under official protection.
The Mayor of the town of Iguala and his wife were arrested under charges of corruption but the investigation of the destiny of the forty six missing students never got anywhere.
Now, the decision of the Mexican central Government of preventing the continuation of the independent investigation throws an additional cloak of mystery on the disappearance of the forty six students and many ask themselves why is it that the Government of Mexico attempts to prevent this investigation.
All this fear of the truth does nothing but increase the suspicions that very important persons, much more important than a mere Mayor of a very small town and a group of corrupt policemen, are involved in this horrible crime.
In the meantime, the relatives of the missing Mexican students continue their unending efforts, overcoming all difficulties, in the hope that one day the truth will come out, and all those responsible for such heinous crime –the actual murderers and all those that, independently of their rank, have attempted to throw a cloak of darkness over the truth-- will answer before justice for their crimes.
Only then, they say, our forty three young relatives will rest in peace!