Photo @Chiapas Pararelo
Maize producers who demand a better price for their products were intercepted by hundreds of state police when they attempted to move the protest they had been sustaining for a week in the capital of Chiapas to the region of Venustiano Carranza. The members of the Union of Maize Ejidos and Communities of the State of Chiapas demand that they be paid 5,000 pesos per ton of grain, but the authorities offer them only 3,600. The campesinos confronted the police, resulting in the burning of several patrol-vehicles, 10 injured police, and 2 arrested campesinos. Human-rights organizations denounced that the Chiapas state government is practicing repression in place of engaging with the legitimate demands of social groups. In a 27 November bulletin, the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Center for Human Rights calls on the state government of Chiapas to cease its criminalization of social protest and at all moments guarantee and respect the rights to physical security as well as freedom of expression, assembly, thought, and association. Thus, it calls for the immediate release of those who were arbitrarily arrested by the police and for medical attention to the injured.
For more information (in Spanish):
Uso desproporcionado de la fuerza pública en operativo policiaco en contra de productores de maíz (Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, 27 de noviembre de 2013)
Más de tres mil productores de maíz se enfrentan a policías en Chiapas: 11 heridos (La Jornada, 28 de noviembre de 2013)
Reclamaban precio de garantía a la tonelada de maíz y les mandaron policías (Chiapas Paralelo, 28 de noviembre de 2013)
Para más información de SIPAZ:
Chiapas: Visita de Oliver De Shutter, relator especial de la ONU sobre el Derecho a la Alimentación (17 de junio de 2011)
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