BRUSSELS

Dozens of young men were seen being pushed into police vans after they participated in a student protest in Iguala, Mexico, on September 26.

A month later, they are still missing.

''The only thing we hope is that they are found, even if they are not alive,’’ said Catherine Penarillos, a Mexican student living in Brussels.

''It’s been already a month and nobody is going to keep them alive,’’ she added.

Catherine was one of about 100 of people who gathered outside the European Commission on Friday to protest against the disappearance of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa rural teachers college in Iguala, Mexico.

The protesters held banners reading: "There are not just 43 students missing, but rather 26,000 people who have gone missing since 2005."

- Cartel killings

Guerrero State Prosecutor Inaky Blanco told reporters earlier this month that authorities had found unmarked graves full of human remains outside Iguala, a city in the Mexican state of Guerrero, which is plagued by gang violence.

But he did not specify how many bodies had been found or say if they were those of the 43 missing students.

Investigators say the police took the students to members of the Guerreros Unidos cartel and told them they were members of a rival gang.

Guerrero State Prosecutor Inaky Blanco said on October 5 that two hit men from the Guerreros Unidos cartel admitted killing 17 of the 43 students and then dumping them in a pit.

Catherine said the protesters want to pressure the EU’s executive to ''stop supporting'' Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office on December 1, 2012.

- Gang violence pledge

The EU is Mexico's second-biggest export market after the U.S. and Mexico's third-largest source of imports after the U.S. and China, according to the European Commission.

Nieto, who is also the supreme commander of Mexico’s armed forces, has pledged he will put an end to gang violence.

According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico, 95,632 murders were recorded between 2007 and 2011 in the country.

The missing students, men in their late teens and early 20s, were seeking to raise money to fund protests over what they said was a discriminatory policy of the hiring students from urban areas in preference to those from rural regions.

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