Protest At German Embassy Over Use of HK-G36 Rifles In Ayotzinapa Case (01/15/2015)

Mexicans Defy German 'Order' to Leave, Foto: Frank Garcis & Somos Los Otros NY (01/14/2015)

La Cartita (01/15/2015) -- According to the German newspaper, Tages Zeitung (TAZ via Deutsche Welle ), Mexican police forces that assaulted and kidnapped 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers college used mainly German weapons during their attack. Mexican federal agents decommissioned over 36 Heckler and Koch G-36 assault rifles when they disarmed the municipal police in Iguala, Guerrero.

In fact, the German HK G-36 weapon model has been used against Ayotzinapa normal students once before. On December, 2011, two Ayotzinapa students, Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, were killed by Mexican federal and state police during a student protest against budget cuts in Chilpancingo, Guerrero. The agents held G-36 weapons which, according to German law, were never supposed to enter the state of Guerrero due to its status as a conflict zone. These incidents underscore the heavy use of German assault rifles in well documented human rights violations.

In response, Mexicans held a protest at the German embassy in New York. Embassy spokesperson, Christian Doktor, relayed the official position of the German government regarding the G-36 assault rifle's export to Mexico. Doktor minimised the German government's role and stated that there was an active ban on their export to Mexico:




Doktor, however, failed to mention that the prosecutor's office has not brought the case to trail. Deutsche Welle reports that German activist "Jürgen Grässlin filed criminal charges against the company [H&K] in Stuttgart for violating export laws, but Stuttgart prosecutors have failed to bring the investigation to court." In other words, the German government has been less than aggressive in securing control of small firearms to conflict zones. Only German citizens have initiated a serious investigation into the export of small arms to Mexico.

Left unanswered is how the G-36 models ever arrived to Guerrero in the first place. Before the German government placed a ban on the export of the G-36 to all of Mexico in 2010, there already existed a ban on importing the G-36 to the following four states: Guerrero, Jalisco, Chihuahua and Chiapas since 2007. Over a period of three years, apparently, the police forces of these states were still able to stockpile the weapon with impunity. In fact, according to Mexico Via Berlin , even while being labeled as conflict zones by the German government, the four states requested replacement parts for the G-36 models in their possession through the 'SEDENA' (Secretary of Defense). The SEDENA would then relay the purchase order to H&K.

Again, according to Doktor, Germany has outlawed the sale of the G-36 model to Mexico since 2010. In fact, this very point was raised by the protestors themselves. They reason that since the number and quality of the weapons is so high, there must exist an extremely well organized black market for the G-36 model and export controls imposed by Germany on Heckler & Koch in paper are not actually implemented in Mexico (or elsewhere, for that matter). The biggest piece of evidence for the German government's neglect of the issue is the G-36's use during the attack against the Ayotzinapa students on September 26, 2014.

Finally, the high firing rate of the G-36 model not only makes the weapon deadly, but also extremely unreliable over time. Therefore, one can extrapolate that replacement parts and entirely new rifles are needed to keep the model in service past 2010, the year Germany banned the G-36's sale in Mexico. The G-36's ubiquity in Guerrero, then, minimally implies a lack of control on part of the German government over Heckler & Koch. At worse, the lack of regulation on the weapons could also be a consequence of official corruption. How else could the Iguala and Cocula police so liberally expend ammunition without having a relatively new or refurbished model of the G-36? In other words, the weapon and model parts are still circulating freely in Mexico, directly contributing to the kidnapping of the 43 Ayotzinapa students.

Mexicans Organize Protest At German Embassy via Somos Los Otros NY Mexicans Protest Against German Arm Exports In Front Of German Consulate in New York, Foto: Frank Garcis & Somos Los Otros NY (01/14/2015)

When Mexicans first arrived to the German Consulate, they were met by an extremely hostile consular official who immediately threatened to call the police. Minutes before her threat, the NYPD had already cruised through the area and even after having seen the protestors still drove away.

Mexicans Defy German Consulate 'Order' to Leave Premises, Foto: Frank Garcis & Somos Los Otros NY (01/14/2015)


Eventually, one squad car with two disinterested NYPD officers arrived to the German consulate. Not seeing anything out of the ordinary, they consulted with another Consulate employee: German Consulate Employee Consults With NYPD Officer (01/14/2015)