MEXICO-VIOLENCE/MARCH Mexicans take to streets in show of support for embattled police

Record ID: 149616

  • Title: MEXICO-VIOLENCE/MARCH Mexicans take to streets in show of support for embattled police
  • Date: 1st June 2015
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF PROTESTERS SIGNING MEXICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM AS THEY CRY
  • Embargoed: 16th June 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Mexico
  • Country: Mexico
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAEKD6R3MQRMX76G9NFH4RXXC1Q
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Hundreds of Mexicans took to the streets of their capital Sunday (May 31) in a show of support for national security forces as the internal violence that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since 2007 has ensnared dozens more in a spate of recent high-profile massacres. The event was called the "Silent march for peace in Jalisco and Mexico."
    The country is in fact preparing to hold its midterm elections June 7 amid wide calls for a boycott of the elections as a result of the violence.
    On May 26, hundreds of people marched in Mexico City, eight months after the abduction and possible murder of 43 students in Iguala. To end their protest, they set fire to political propaganda to show their contempt for all the political parties and their distrust of the electoral process.
    And Mexico's national security spokesman has denied that 42 suspected gang members killed in a recent gunfight near the Michoacan-Jalisco border, in which government forces suffered just one fatality, were executed after the one-sided death toll raised doubts.
    In such a heated climate, protesters came out to Mexico City's Reforma Avenue to show their support for the state. The supporters of the security forces were dressed in white.
    "We all want peace in Mexico. We don't want violence. We don't want more death. We don't want more hostages and kidnapping. We want peace, and for that we have to recognise those who are fighting for Mexico, for peace," said Jose Antonio Ortega, the director of the Mexican People's Council for Public Security and Penal Justice.
    The activists expressed concern that the country's foot soldiers were being forgotten.
    "We all need recognition of one form or another and I think that today is that moment for all the federal forces, to tell them we are here for that, to back them up, to say to them, we stand with you, with their family, to say to them yes we are hurting, that we are in pain because they too are victims of all this violence," said anti-kidnapping activist, Isabel Miranda de Wallace.
    The parents of the missing students and activists as well as diverse social groups in Guerrero have threatened to suspend elections in Guerrero, where the 43 student teachers went missing last September.
    Protesters have also constantly attacked the headquarters of the state government and local electoral institute offices to show their dissatisfaction against the government and elections.
    Regional elections across several states and for the whole lower congress in Mexico are also shaping up to be tense in the state of Oaxaca, where teachers have joined movements against education reforms proposed by President Enrique Pena Nieto. They have also threatened to boycott the elections.
    The Mexican government says the students in Guerrero were abducted by corrupt local police, who handed them over to a violent drug gang that killed them and incinerated their bodies.
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