Coyuca de Benítez, foto @Mexico-net.mx
On 10 November, Luis Olivares, director of the Union of Producers of the Grand Coast (UPCG), was murdered along with his partner Ana Lilia Gatica in Coyuca de Benítez by unidentified armed assailants. His former wife Zeferina Romero Fernández has said that “he did not have opponents; I believe it was the government itself [who did it].” She recalled that when his cousin David Romero Téllez was murdered on 2 November, the hitmen left a note threatening him with death; it said that, wherever he went, they would find him.
Consulted regarding the murder of Olivares Enríquez and his partner, Manuel Olivares Hernández, representative of the Guerrero Network of Civil Human Rights Organizations (Redgroac), expressed that “we are confronting a full-scale campaign to cleanse social activists,” and he recalled that this year the following dissidents had been murdered: Arturo Hernández Cardona, Raymundo Velázquez Flores, Rocío Mesino Mesino, and Luis Olivares Enríquez. Bertoldo Martínez Cruz, representative of the Front of Democratic Organizations of Guerrero State (FOGED), noted that the murder of the UPCG leader corresponds to a policy on the part of the State to stifle social protest. The Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights, in a 11 November communique, energetically condemned the murders of Luis Olivares Enríquez and Ana Lilia Gatica Rómulo and demanded that the “state government of Guerrero undertake a expeditious investigation.”
For more information (in Spanish):
Es una campaña de limpieza: Redgroac (La Jornada de Guerrero, 10 de noviembre de 2013)
Asesinan al líder de productores agrícolas Luis Olivares Enríquez (La Jornada de Guerrero, 11 de noviembre de 2013)
El asesinato de Luis Olivares, parte de una política de Estado, dice Bertoldo Martínez (La Jornada de Guerrero, 10 de noviembre de 2013)
Comunicado Tlachinollan (11 de noviembre de 2013)
For more information from SIPAZ (in English):
Guerrero: Using violence, 30 masked men abduct 4 men from Coyuca de Benítez (13 November 2013)
Guerrero: two nephews of ecological leadership are murdered (16 November 2012)
Guerrero: Urgent Action for disappeared ecologists (8 February 2012)
Guerrero briefs: Two ecologists are kidnapped by armed men in the Sierra de Petatlán (14 December 2011)
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