In a press-conference, representatives of social movements and civil human-rights organizations, among them the Digna Ochoa Center for Human Rights, the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Center for Human Rights, the Fray Matías de Córdova Center for Human Rights, and the Center for the Rights of Women in Chiapas launched on Thursday 23 June the “National and International campaign against judicial harassment and the criminalization of human-rights defenders in Mexico.” They reported that the objective of this campaign is to demand a true justice and to express opposition to political persecution, repression ,and criminalization.
The Digna Ochoa CDH advocated for the cancellation of juridical threats and unjust penal processes against social activists and communal defenders. Concretely, it requested the nullification of the investigations against Nataniel Hernández Núñez, director of said Center, who was detained on two occasions in February and March 2011. Members of the Digna Ochoa CDH and the Autonomous Regional Council of the Coast of Chiapas (CARZCC) emphasized that “it remains clear that the strategy of persecution against the comrade and repression against the people who organize themselves and struggle [continues]. Presently he faces five penal investigations–fabricated–which show yet again that in Mexico it is not justice that exists but impunity which prevails. The comrade is not alone, nor is anyone [else] who raises one’s voice and organizes oneself in defense of one’s people and rights.”
The Fray matías de Córdova Center for Human Rights has declared that “in accordance with the Digna Ochoa CDH, we have suspended our legal representation of Nataniel Hernández. We understand the truth and comprehend that a justice system that persecutes human-rights defenders and bases itself in fabricated evidence and failures of office is not justice. It is thus better to seek other means of social and political defense–as long as the courts are inaccessible to people like Nataniel.”
For more information (in Spanish):
Campaña nacional e internacional contra el hostigamiento judicial y criminalizacion a defensores de DH en México, Cencos 22 June 2011
Exigen justicia contra la persecución política, (Cuarto Poder, 24 June 2011)
Peligroso
, defender derechos humanos en México, denuncia el Centro Digna Ochoa, (La Jornada, 21 June 2011)
Audio:
Audio de la conferencia de prensa, Radio Pozol, 23 June 2011
For more information from SIPAZ (in English):
México: Pronunciations and actions as regards the situation of human-rights defenders in the country and southeastern Mexico (25 March 2011)
Chiapas: director of Digna Ochoa Center for Human Rights detained once again (20 March 2011)
Chiapas: 3 human-rights defenders from the Digna Ochoa Center for Human Rights released from El Amate (8 March 2011)
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