Some 29 young people are still missing after two days of protests in Guadalajara against aggressive police behavior.
Ironically, police reacted with violence on both Thursday and Friday as hundreds turned out to protest the alleged murder by police of a 30-year-old man in Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos on May 4.
On Friday, Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro referred to the behavior of some police as “irresponsible and brutal” and promised justice for those responsible.
On Saturday, he followed up with an apology for the behavior by police.
He also vowed that each one of the young people reported missing would be sought “one by one” until they were located.
The non-governmental organization Where Do the Disappeared Go (A dónde van los desaparecidos) said that as of early Saturday afternoon there were still 29 missing after they were forcefully removed from the protests and taken away in unmarked trucks.
Nineteen were detained during a second protest on Friday; the others were arrested the day before, according to the organization, which published their names on Twitter Saturday afternoon, and said their whereabouts remained unknown.
One of them is a 25-year-old law graduate whose family saw him last in a news video that showed him being violently arrested and taken away by five police officers during Thursday’s protest.
“It hurts me a great deal to see the abuse by police against citizens,” the governor said Saturday, but added that he was also hurt to see people attacking the police.
He repeated an accusation he made Thursday that the protest had been infiltrated by people whose intention was to destabilize state security. He blamed President López Obrador but later backed down on the accusation.
Source: Milenio (sp)
