Francisco Toledo (@ciudadanía-Express)
In a press conference on 23 April, the famous Oaxacan painter Francisco Toledo affirmed that he had received death-threats via e-mail presumably sent by members of the criminal group Los Zetas, to the e-mail address of the Institute of Graphical Arts of Oaxaca. He explained that the message sent on 14 April indicated to the authors of the message that they had been contracted by someone to assassinate him, without offering any reason or motive. He presented a penal denunciation before the Federal Attorney General’s Office due to these happenings. Toledo said that he is worried in light of the death-threat against him but also because of the various death-threats that are being directed against human-rights defenders in general, given that his case joints that of death-threats against the coordinator of Social Pastoral Work for Human Mobility, Alejandro Solalinde, of the Diocene Commission for Peace and Justice, Francisco Wilfrido Mayrén Peláez and from the Gobixta Committee for Defense of Human Rights (CODIGO-DH), Alba Cruz Ramos, as well as to the family of the former political prisoner Marcelino Coache. For his part, the State Attorney General, Manuel de Jesús López López, has said that the PGR has decided to grant Toledo protection, in light of the threats against him.
It should be recalled that on 29 February, the Twitter user @veritas_lex published a note indicating that “we offer Oaxacan citizens 10 million pesos for the hired killing of the retrograde Francisco Toledo.” Some days later, the user of that account was identified as Jorge Hugo Hernández Hernández, militant of the National Action Party.
For more information (in Spanish):
Francisco Toledo denuncia ante la PGR amenazas de muerte (La Jornada, 24 de abril de 2012)
Francisco Toledo teme por su vida (El Universal, 24 de abril de 2012)
Denuncia el pintor Francisco Toledo amenazas de Los Zetas (Proceso, 23 de abril de 2012)
For more information from SIPAZ (in English):
Oaxaca: Urgent Actcción Urgente para garantizar la protección del Padre “Uvi”, defensor de derechos humanos (21 April 2012)
Oaxaca: Death-threats against rights-defender Alba Cruz and wife of Marcelino Coache (19 April 2012)
Oaxaca: Urgent Action in the case of Padre Uvi (13 August 2010)
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