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MEXICO CITY: Thousands of protesters wore red and carried symbolic coffins during a demonstration in Mexico City on Saturday, demanding answers about the 43 trainee teachers who went missing 12 years ago.<\/p>\n
President Claudia Sheinbaum, who regularly meets with the disappeared\u2019s families, is expected to present a report Monday on the latest progress in the case, following an exhaustive review of the evidence by the attorney general\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause they were taken alive, we want them back alive,\u201d one banner slogan read.<\/p>\n
The protest was led by parents of the 43 teacher trainees from Ayotzinapa, who led the procession to the capital\u2019s main square, where the government palace is located.<\/p>\n
Others counted to 43 several times to honor each of the trainees from the rural teachers\u2019 college who disappeared on September 26, 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother year of strain, of exhaustion, of hopelessness,\u201d Estanislao Mendoza, one of the parents of the 43, told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to know, whether it\u2019s good or bad, alive or dead, but to know the truth, to know where they are,\u201d he said. \u201cTwelve years of suffering, of lies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The students were traveling from Guerrero state to a protest in Mexico City. Local police stopped them in the town of Iguala, where six died in an hours-long street clash and 43 later went missing.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors initially said the officers delivered the 43 teacher trainees to drug cartel hitmen, who killed them, incinerated their bodies and dumped the remains in a river.<\/p>\n
However, independent human rights experts have rejected the government\u2019s conclusion, and the unsolved case remains a stain on Mexico\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n
A former governor was arrested in August, on accusations of deleting the security videos of the scene of the crime in Iguala. The former state attorney general was also arrested in 2022.<\/p>\n
More than 134,000 people are listed as disappeared in Mexico.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s necessary to support a struggle against the indifference of a government that refuses to accept that there is a disappearance crisis,\u201d said 69-year-old Atanacio Pina, whose missing son was later found dead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n