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Mexico leader travels amid unrest over massacre

– President defends trip –

Despite the unrest, Pena Nieto left for China to attend an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit before a two-day state visit in the country, with which he has sought closer ties.

He will then travel to Brisbane, Australia, for a G20 summit before returning Saturday.

Pena Nieto used a layover in Alaska to defend the trip, telling reporters it would be “irresponsible” for him to miss summits that are important for Mexico.

A new controversy emerged during his travels, as the news website Aristegui Noticias reported that his wife had bought a luxurious home owned by a Mexican firm linked to a Chinese-led consortium that had won a bullet train contract.

Pena Nieto abruptly cancelled the contract Thursday after the opposition questioned the transparency of the bidding process, in which the Chinese-Mexican group led by China Railway Construction Corp. was the only bidder.

Pena Nieto’s office said in a statement that his wife, former soap opera star Angelica Rivera, had purchased the home on her own. Aristegui Noticias valued the property at $7 million.

Amnesty International has charged that the trip “shows the lack of interest in confronting the grave human rights situation in Mexico.”

“It’s a joke. It shows his lack of moral courage, playing with the feelings and dignity of 43 students,” said Juan Gonzalez, a student from their Ayotzinapa teacher-training college in Guerrero.

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Gang-linked police shot at busloads of students in the Guerrero city of Iguala on September 26, in a night of violence that left six people dead.

The police then handed the 43 abducted students to the Guerreros Unidos.

Prosecutors say the city’s mayor, worried that the students would interrupt a speech by his wife, had ordered the police to confront them. They are among 74 people, including police and gangsters, detained in the investigation.

The suspected mass murder would rank among the worst massacres in a drug war that has killed more than 80,000 people and left 22,000 others missing since 2006.

The students had travelled to Iguala to raise funds but hijacked four buses to return home, a common practice among the young men known for their radical leftwing politics.

Parents of the students, who deeply distrust the government, refuse to believe the authorities until they get DNA results from independent Argentine forensic experts.

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