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Protest Against Competitive Exams--Hold Police Hostage

Ohanian Comment: Note that student protestors were joined by parents and sympathetic farmers. There are more people who are sympathetic to our cause than we realize. Let's get out and talk to the parents and the farmers.

Police lobbed tear gas from helicopters and hundreds of student protesters attacked officers with clubs, stones and machetes in a
clash that left more than 30 people injured and more than 200 detained in Chiapas.

The confrontation began late Wednesday (08/06) in the capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez, when police tried to take back 16 trucks the students
commandeered from the government and private businesses to protest new regulations for obtaining teaching positions. The students
occupied the teaching school on Monday to protest rules requiring that they take competitive exams to get teaching positions; until last year, the students automatically received the jobs. The protests escalated when the students began to take over government and private business vans. When hundreds of police arrived on Wednesday, students tried to block their entry by throwing rocks and sticks and lighting one of the vehicles on fire, said a state police official spokesman on customary condition of anonymity. Students held seven officers hostage inside the school while they presented their demands. The officers were released unharmed Thursday morning after the students and government officials agreed to negotiate a solution to the dispute. More than 30 students and eight police were lightly injured. Police arrested 218 students, parents and sympathetic farmers who joined the protests.



— Associated Press
Chicapas: Students and police clash
Mexico Week In Review: 08.04-08.10
2003-08-07
http://www.topica.com/lists/ncdm-english/read/message.html?mid=1714102046&sort=d&start=126

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