IPN Refuses to Negotiate Until Students Are Released

The apprehension of one student from the National Polytechnic institute (IPN) and two more from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), during Monday’s protests against the Mexican government’s poor handling of the 43 missing Ayotzinapa Students, caused the talks among the federal government and the General Polytechnic Assembly (AGP) to be suspended. Stalling once again the signing of an agreement that could put an end to the ongoing conflict of the IPN, now into its ninth week.

As the student representatives insisted on solving the legal situation of their incarcerated colleagues before signing any possible agreement, the federal officials decided to leave the premises. Hours later the Public Education Secretary (SEP) issued a statement deeming the AGP representatives as intransigent due to the conditions they demanded for the agreement to be signed.

To this, the AGP answered that conditioning the signing to the release of their colleagues can not be qualified of intransigency, “he is part of the polytechnic community, we cannot go back to the classrooms as long as there are students imprisoned.”

In the proceeding meeting, the representatives read a document stating that student detentions are incompatible with the agreement of avoiding any form of retaliation against IPN students from police or security agencies.

Alejandro Ozuna, head of the Coordination of Federal Liaisons of the Interior Secretary answered that no retaliation didn’t mean immunity. Being a student “does not exculpate them [in case] they break the law,” the federal official said. Ozuna committed to search federal government and IPN attornies, to send a team of lawyers to study the particular cases of each of the detainees, but pointed out that it lies with the federal authorities to release the students, as they are charged of ordinary crimes.