BURNABY—CoDevelopment Canada, along with CIPO-Vancouver and Amnesty International, have organized a caravan from Mexico that will be speaking at various events and forums in Vancouver next week about the issues and implications surrounding the murder and forced disappearance of students by Mexican state security forces last fall.
On September 26, 2014, Mexican state security forces attacked a group of students from the teachers’ college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, killing six people and forcibly disappearing 43 others who were never seen again. The crime has pulled the veil off an acute human rights crisis in Mexico. The search for the students has uncovered more than 15 mass graves, none of them containing the bodies of the students.
The Caravan from Ayotzinapa to Ottawa, organized by Canadian solidarity and human-rights organizations, will allow advocates and relatives of the victims to tell their stories to the public and to Canadian policy makers. The visitors are Hilda Legideño Vargas, a single mother and crafts seller who lost her son in the attack; Jorge Luis Clemente Balbuena, a member of the student committee of the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college; and Vidulfo Rosales Sierra, a lawyer from the human-rights centre Tlachinollan and the legal representative of the families of the 43 disappeared students.
Events in Vancouver:
Sunday, April 12 Public forum: 2 – 5 p.m., SFU harbor centre
Monday, April 13 Press conference: 10 a.m., Outside Mexican Consultate
BCTF event: 4 p.m., BCTF meeting room
Tuesday, April 14 VDLC international solidarity night: 6 p.m., Maritime Labour Centre
Friday, April 17 Fundraiser: 6 p.m.–12 midnight, Royal Legion on Commercial and 6th
More info: http://makemexicosafe.ca/ayotzinapa2ottawa/ https://www.facebook.com/events/1414697398838703/
Download the Caravan poster.