Rights Groups Say Mexico Government Using 'Terror' to Curb Social Protests Fernando Camacho Servin - La Jornada
go to original March 2, 2015

Members of the Guerrero State Coordinator of Education Workers (CETEG) carry the coffin of 65-year-old Claudio Castillo Pena while arriving at his wake in Acapulco. (Reuters)

Teacher Claudio Castillo’s death during the clash between teachers and police officers in Acapulco, Guerrero, as well as the claims of alleged sexual assault of several educators, reveals a clear hardening by authorities against popular movements, which began when the disappeared students from Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School were declared dead, civil groups said.

Vidulfo Rosales, lawyer for the Tlachinollan Mountains Human Rights Center, stressed that the eviction of members of the State Coordinating Committee of Education Workers of Guerrero (CETEG) last Tuesday [Feb. 24] is part of a “repressive scheme that has been drawn up” since the Attorney General of the Republic declared the close of the Iguala case’s investigations.

“From the moment that the search (for the students) stopped and federal forces were sent packing to Acapulco and Chilancingo, both vital centers for protest in Guerrero, they have deployed their forces to start a new kind of relationship with the parents of the teachers college students, where the climate of discrediting intensifies,” he said.

All of that made it possible for security forces to act with excessive use of force and brutality while dispersing the CETEG march, as evidenced by the mile-long stretch of numerous fragments of auto glass the police broke on “any vehicle that was there”, without needing to do so.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Translated by Crystal Silkwood

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico — on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx

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