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A team of independent investigators, probing the disappearance and alleged killing of 43 college students at the hands of criminal gangs in 2014 in Mexico, is set to dispute the government's account of what happened, reports said Friday.
[...] The international panel faced a sustained campaign of harassment, stonewalling and intimidation, The New York Times reported. The panel of experts alleged that the investigators endured planned attacks from Mexican news media and a refusal by the government to turn over documents or grant interviews with essential figures.
[...] The Mexican government had earlier concluded that the 43 students, who were in the city of Iguala in southwestern Mexico as part of a protest, were kidnapped by police officers working for criminal gangs, who then killed and incinerated them in a garbage dump of a nearby town.
The attorney general, who led the government probe, reportedly called the office's finding the "historic truth."
The independent investigators have opposed this version and maintained that the government's account of the events was based in part on confessions apparently extracted by torture. The panel also dismissed the theory that the students were burnt beyond identification at a rubbish dump as physically impossible.
Source: The International Business Times
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday April 25 2016, @02:22PM
I'm thinking there's more to it than the War on Drugs. What kind of sick society condones such violence? How could the murders of 49 people be met with such calculated indifference from their own society? Sicily has this culture of Omerta that empowers Mafia operations. Are they all cowards, too afraid of the narcos to fight back thought they must outnumber the criminals 3 to 1 at the least? Do they secretly wish for the deaths of people they view as competitors? The fact is, often two neighboring villages could each immediately benefit from the death of the other, if it can be pulled off without arousing too much suspicion and distrust, bringing down retaliation, or stirring any nobler thoughts of sympathy or fears that they could be the next victims in a return to a lawless jungle existence that they helped bring about. For that matter, are their institutions so corrupt they already are effectively lawless, and the society seeks rather a balance of power between corrupt government and brutal narcos in which they can eke out a miserable existence so long as these 2 powers remain largely at odds?
Good land is precious, the problem is almost always that it's not vacant. I imagine that villages just outside some natural disaster area thrived and gained rather more than average in the wake of the disaster. Nazi Germany was certainly based upon plunder, to name one of the most recent examples in history. The Mongol Empire was another of that stripe. And of course the European conquest of the Americas is another standout example, with the US-Mexican War of 1848 a closing chapter in that thinly justified land grab.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday April 25 2016, @02:50PM
The explanation may be as simple as: the local drug lord have more money that whatever the central govt can offer to the local administration.
A similar (in principle) situation happens in US: the corporations have more influencing power on the govt/legislative than the citizens... the difference stays only the fact that the corps made whatever they are doing to be(came) legal, so that they don't need to resort to violence to prevail - the effect on the citizens is the same, though: they are the less able to govern their own lives [pewsocialtrends.org].
I can answer in the negative [wikipedia.org] (thanks to an AC trolling/astroturfing [soylentnews.org])
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 25 2016, @05:12PM
What kind of sick society condones such violence? How could the murders of 49 people be met with such calculated indifference from their own society? Sicily has this culture of Omerta that empowers Mafia operations.
I think it's location.
Notice that usually, the most fucked-up cultures on Earth are close to the Equator. The closer, the worse they are. Middle eastern cultures are generally the worst (see ISIS, Wahhabism) but Latin American cultures are pretty close too. What do they have in common: they're close to the Equator. And so is Sicily. Notice that northern Italy is generally much more corruption-free and industrious than southern Italy, with Sicily, being south of most of the nation, is the worst part. The South and Texas in the US are more fucked-up than places to the north. Back in Europe, Spain was under a dictatorship until the mid-70s, and Greece was too. The most prosperous nations in Europe are generally the ones to the north: Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and then after the Iron Curtain fell, look at which countries really prospered when they weren't shackled by the Soviets: Czechia (their new name), Poland, Latvia, and Finland. Heck, Finland is now the envy of the world in many ways, and that place is downright frigid. Others have had much more trouble, namely Yugoslavia. What's the difference? Latvia and Finland are in the north, Yugoslavia is in the south.
There must be something about being close to the Equator that makes people crazy.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday April 25 2016, @06:14PM
Somewhat relatedly: North-South divide [wikipedia.org]
And your observations are only true recently. Back in the day, Rome, Byzantium, Alexander the Great, Persia, various civilizations in the fertile crescent...would the most recent example of a really successful civilization in that area be the Ottoman Empire? Which was broken up at the end of WWI.
Yeah yeah, my cultural biases are showing :/
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 5, Informative) by devlux on Monday April 25 2016, @06:22PM
Fuck dude just because it barely met with a blip on the US news media doesn't mean it wasn't a HUGE deal here in Mexico.
No one condoned this shit. There were marches, there were sit ins. There were people who torched the govt central offices in that state and burned it to the ground.
The Mayor fled the area and was found hiding 2,000 miles away in what was the largest manhunt in memory.
There are people today who still bring together memorial ceremonies and celebrations.
That thing was a HUGE deal that effected everyone from TJ to Cancun and it still is.
Quit being a small minded racist prick and assuming just because it didn't make the 6'oclock news in the USA, that it wasn't earth shattering down here to the people actually living it.
Then realize that Mexico prefers to be left the hell alone and an outside body trying to "dig truth" probably will be stonewalled simply because the natives here will assume that the "truth digger" has an agenda.