Thousands rally against drug cartel violence in Mexico following film students’ deaths
Demonstrators poured onto the streets of Mexico Friday to protest the brutal slaying of three film students by gang members who mistook them for rivals.
Nearly 12,000 people, including university students and teachers from five universities, flooded Guadalajara Thursday, calling for peace and justice in the crime-ridden region.
Authorities confirmed Monday that Salomon Aceves Gastelum, 25, Daniel Diaz, 20, and Marco Avalos, 20, were kidnapped, tortured, and killed by members of a drug cartel last month, CBS News reported. Their bodies were later dissolved in acid.
“The absurd war on drugs is taking our classmates and we will not allow it anymore,” Jesus Medina, a student at the University of Guadalajara, told CBS News.
The public was also horrified by rapper Christian Omar Palma Gutierrez’s confession that he dissolved the students’ bodies in acid.
The YouTube star — known as “QBA” — admitted to working for the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel for 3,000 pesos — $159 — per week.
He is also connected to the murders of three victims whose bodies were disposed of in the same way.
He faces charges of aggravated kidnap in connection to the film students’ deaths, CBS News reported.
“People like that who no longer feel … they have forgotten what it is to be human. A total lack of values,” student Jose Eduardo Gomez told AFP.
The film students were abducted on March 19 while filming a school project at a home that Nueva Plaza, a rival gang, had used as a safe house. The Jalisco New Generation cartel — one of Mexico’s most powerful — had been monitoring the location.
The students were reportedly mistaken for members of the rival gang, authorities said.
More than 200,000 people have been murdered since the government launched a military campaign against organized crime in 2006. Another 30,000 have disappeared over the past 12 years.
Source:-http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/thousands-rally-mexico-film-students-deaths-article-1.3959107
