20,000 March for Students Release 
	for nytcamer@ursula; Sat, 12 Feb 2000 05:00:14 -0500


 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit


                                  The News
                       Me'xico City, February 10, 2000.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                     20,000 MARCH FOR PRISONERS' RELEASE

                               By GREG BROSNAN

                           The News Staff Reporter

More than 20,000 leftist demonstrators marched along Mexico City's Paseo de
la Reforma Wednesday to demand the release of 264 student activists who
remain under arrest after federal police ended the nearly ten-month shutdown
of National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Thousands of members of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and
scores of PRD-affiliated social movements joined the friends and parents of
jailed UNAM strikers in the protest.

"All the political prisoners must be liberated," Andres Manuel Lopez
Obrador, the PRD's mayoral candidate and former party president, told The
News as he led a throng of party faithful, including senators and federal
deputies, along the capital's main boulevard. "They shouldn't be punished so
severely."

Many of those held were arrested during a riot at an UNAM high school.
Others are charged with theft and vandalizing property on the sprawling main
campus.

More serious accusations against some students -- including terrorism and
sabotage -- reportedly were dropped on Wednesday. Defenders of the
imprisoned, however, say many of the lighter charges are unfounded. The mass
detentions smack of political persecution, they say.

"They're political prisoners," Miguel Angel Pichardo, a coordinator for the
Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Center for Human Rights, said on Wednesday.
"They're in jail for their political ideas, not just for criminal offenses."
 
=================================================================
  NY Transfer News Collective   *   A Service of Blythe Systems 
           Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us          
              339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012             
  http://www.blythe.org                  e-mail: nyt@blythe.org 
=================================================================
 
nytcamer-02.12.00-05:00:16-2006