MEXICO CITY: Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has shortened an upcoming trip to major summits in China and Australia amid a growing human rights scandal over the disappearance of 43 college students.
Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade said Pena Nieto would leave Sunday instead of Friday to monitor the case, which "worries us," and provide a "transparent and public solution."
Pena Nieto cut four days from the trip, which will now run from November 9 to 15.
Pena Nieto will participate in one of the two days of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing, on November 11, before a two-day state visit in China in his latest effort to forge closer ties with the Asian power.
He will then travel to Brisbane, Australia for the G20 summit but will only attend the first day of the two-day meeting.
Pena Nieto is facing the biggest crisis of his presidency after gang-linked police attacked busloads of students in the southern city of Iguala on September 26, leaving six people dead and 43 missing.
Tens of thousands of people protested Wednesday to demand the safe return of the students amid fears they were killed. More than 200 students protested in front of the attorney general's office on Thursday.
Jose Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director of Human Rights Watch, said the Iguala police attack was "one of the gravest cases recorded in the contemporary history of Mexico and Latin America."
"The human rights situation in Mexico is critical," Vivanco told a news conference, adding that another case, the alleged extrajudicial execution of at least eight gang suspects by soldiers in June, constituted a "crime of state."
Pena Nieto, he said, has kept the same posture regarding human rights as his predecessor, Felipe Calderon, who launched a controversial militarized war against drugs in 2006.
"Impunity is the norm in Mexico, and the Iguala case is extremely serious. It is a sign of the deep human rights crisis in Mexico," he said.
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