(Recasts with violent protests, injuries, arrests) By Lorraine Orlandi MEXICO CITY, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Protesters rampaged through downtown Mexico City smashing windows and cars on Thursday after a march marking a 1968 student massacre turned violent. Police said eight people were wounded and 80 were arrested after violent protesters broke away from an otherwise peaceful march commemorating the killing of students at Mexico City's Tlatelolco square exactly 35 years ago. Protesters ransacked shops and banks, fought riot police and smashed windows at Mexico's Interior Ministry. Studios of the country's main television station Televisa were sprayed with graffiti. Speaking on television, Mexico City Police Chief Marcelo Ebrard blamed the violence on agitators who infiltrated the demonstration to cause trouble. Activists say up to 300 died at the hands of government snipers in the protest at Tlatelolco square 35 years ago. The official death toll was around 30. Thousands march through the streets each year to commemorate the event, seen as emblematic of decades of state violence that critics say the government has done little to investigate. Rights activists said a campaign by President Vicente Fox to probe past atrocities has generated more criticism than results. Fox was seen as a hero for Mexican democracy when he was elected in 2000 after 71 years of one-party rule and in January 2002 named a special prosecutor for "dirty war" crimes by the security forces in the 1960s to the 1980s. MEXICO'S MOST HIGH-PROFILE RIGHTS CASE But no suspects have been brought to trial and the Tlatelolco square massacre -- the country's most high-profile human rights case -- has gone unpunished. "The prosecutor is working as a propaganda show for the government of Fox and not for truth and justice," said Rosario Ibarra, 76, a leading rights activist. The special prosecutor, Ignacio Carrillo, insisted he would get to the bottom of kidnapping, disappearances and murders, most of them carried out by the army and police forces. "I will not be an instrument for deferring justice," Carrillo told Reuters. "Any transition assumes setting straight past accounts. Or you send the message that power has privileges, privileges against the citizens," he said. Mexican security forces under the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party are blamed for a violent campaign against leftist insurgents and activists, though the violence never reached the level of crackdowns by military dictatorships in Argentina and Chile. Carrillo said he would file charges by early next year in the Oct. 2, 1968, massacre of anti-government student protesters in Mexico City. Carrillo, a 56-year-old legal scholar, says his work has been hampered by lack of cooperation from some areas of government, public apathy, scarce resources and skepticism among victims and family members. Fox publicly backed his work in a state of the nation address last month, calling for the truth from the dirty war to be revealed in "the recovery of historic memory" and said justice must be done to consolidate Mexico's democracy. Last year, Carrillo called ex-President Luis Echeverria for questioning, although the former leader from the 1970s invoked his right not to make a statement.(With additional reporting by Greg Brosnan)
|
|
Mexico
MEXICANS STRUGGLE IN AFTERMATH OF HURRICANES MARTY, IGNACIO
CRS - USA
Message from WB/IMF annual meetings to developing countries: “Maybe next time”
Oxfam International
Red Cross Helps Hurricane Victims as Struggles Continue
American Red Cross - USA
Tearfund expresses disappointment at collapse of trade talks
Tearfund - UK
Scheitern der WTO-Konferenz in Cancun trifft Entwicklungsländer am härtesten
Caritas - Germany
Protesters rampage as Mexicans mark massacre
rpt-Mexico 'dirty war' probes make little headway
FEATURE-Mexico City's urban Indians call for autonomy
US eyes post-Cancun trade deal with Central America
FEATURE-Mexico City's urban Indians call for autonomy
|
Printable view
Email this article