Students torch vehicles, set fire to gov’t building in southern Mexico

By Jorge Antonio Rocha

MEXICO CITY (AA) - Protesters in the city of Chilpancingo, the capital of the Mexican state of Guerrero, set fire to the municipal government building on Monday, a month after the killing of a student by state police.

According to local media, the student protesters arrived at the state government headquarters at 8 a.m. local time (1400GMT) in four buses. They reportedly threw firecrackers at the building and set it on fire and torched at least 12 cars in the parking lot.

No injuries or arrests were reported by authorities. The students were not detained and left shortly after.

The protests came a month after police in Chilpancingo murdered Yanqui Kothan, who was on his way back along with two classmates from a protest in Mexico City over the enforced disappearance in 2014 of 43 students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers' School when police attacked them.

Kothan was killed by a gunshot wound to the head.

A month after the murder, family members and students have not obtained justice. Two of the three officers involved in the murder have been arrested, with the third still on the run.

The case has plunged the government of Guerrero into a scandal, as the police had initially testified that the students shot at the officers first and that the vehicle they were traveling in was stolen. However, the local and federal government confirmed that this did not happen.

Through a press release shared by the Federation of Socialist Peasant Students of Mexico (FECSM), the students said Monday’s protest was due to the assignment of the Secretary General of the Government, Ludwig Marcial Reynoso Nunez, as an advisor to the secretary of the interior and Francisco Rodriguez Cisneros as undersecretary of human rights.

Both Nunez and Cisneros were fired from their posts as heads of security in the state after the murder of Kothan for having been part of the testimony of the police officers who blamed the students for the shootings.

The students said the reinstatement of both officials within the government is an "affront and a mockery" to the families of the victims. ​​​​​​​

Students at the Raul Isidro Burgos teachers' college have been subjected to violence by the Mexican armed forces as well as organized crime for years.