MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -A group protesting the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico in 2014 knocked down a door to the country’s presidential palace, video from local television stations showed on Wednesday morning.
The protesters rammed down the door using a white pickup truck from Mexico’s state electrical company, videos showed, while President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was giving his daily morning press conference inside.
Police at the scene used tear gas to disperse the group and law enforcement erected barriers within the palace to keep the protesters from penetrating the building.
By midmorning the scene was calm, according to a Reuters witness, with the door to the palace secured and no protesters inside the building.
More than a 100 protesters remained camped outside the palace. Local media reported that some involved in the smashing of the door had been arrested.
Asked about the incident during the press conference, Lopez Obrador said he was not going to repress the protest and that the government would continue to investigate the case of the missing students, who disappeared in one of the country’s most notorious violent incidents.
“The door will be fixed and there will be no problem,” said the president, who said the protesters would meet with members of his government.
“But what they want is to provoke,” he added, saying that the protesters were being manipulated by rights groups that were against his government and did not want the truth about the case to come out. He offered no evidence for the claim.
He continued to attack the lawyers of the missing students’ parents, saying they prohibited them from speaking with him, again offering no evidence for the claim. He emphasized the government was continuing to look for the students and said he would speak with the parents “in time.”
The Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center (Prodh), which represents the families of the missing students, said it did not support the acts of some of the protesters.
In a post on social media platform X, it bemoaned the lack of dialogue with the president and the government in recent months and rejected allegations that it manipulated the families of the victims.
“We urge the re-establishment of a respectful dialogue,” it said.
(Reporting by Raquel Cunha, Sarah Kinosian and Raul Cortes; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Stephen Eisenhammer and Jonathan Oatis)
