On 6 and 7 December 2013 in the community of Susuclumil, Tila, Chiapas, there was held a pre-audience for the Mexico chapter of the People’s Permanent Tribunal (TPP), part of the “Focus on Dirty War – violence, impunity, and lack of access to justice.” Relatives of victims, survivors, and those displaced from the Northern Zone and Highlands of Chiapas presented their word regarding the “victims of the counter-insurgent and extermination strategies contemplated in the Plan for Chiapas Campaign 94 which was implemented by the Mexican government following the insurrection of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in 1994, which resulted in dozens of forced disappearances, murders, force displacements, rapes, and massacres; all of these are crimes against humanity which continue to go unpunished.”
In the event, there were presented testimonies regarding the extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances committed during the second half of the 1990s in the zone below Tila, in addition to the forced displacements of the communities of Chuctiejá, Miguel Alemán, Jolnixtié I Sección, Masojá Shuchá, El Limar, and Masojá Grande. The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Center for Human Rights has documented 85 extrajudicial executions, 35 forced disappearances, and at least 3500 displaced persons during this time in the northern zone of Chiapas.
The ruling of the TPP, also presented in a press-conference in San Cristobal de las Casas on 9 December, stresses that “We have heard the pain, fear, and injustice of the looting experienced and suffered by the survivors of extrajudicial executions, torture, forced disappearances, forced displacement, rape, looting of resources and land as a consequence of the actions taken by the Mexican government […]. The Mexican State is responsible at the three levels of government, as originating in the security forces at the state, municipal, and Army levels, for they gave support and economic aid to paramilitary groups, particularly the grouping named ‘Development, Peace, and Justice’ […]. From the evidence which speak to these human-rights violations, crimes against humanity and genocide can be seen in the policies exercised against the indigenous Ch’ol, Tzotzil, and Tseltal peoples. These actions continue to the present day, when we celebrate this pre-audience.”
For more information (in Spanish):
La guerra contra el EZLN, las otras víctimas (Parte 1), Chiapas paralelo, 10 de diciembre de 2013
Siguen impunes crímenes en Chiapas (El Universal, 9 de diciembre de 2013)
Inicia preaudiencia del Tribunal Permanente de Pueblos en Tila, Chiapas (La Jornada, 9 de diciembre de 2013)
Dictamen de la preaudiencia en Chiapas
For more information from SIPAZ (in English):
Chiapas: Invitation to attend the preaudience “Meeting for justice and truth” in Susuclumil, Tila municipality (8 December 2013)
Chiapas: PUDEE denounces “climate of violence” generated by the CFE in the zone below Tila (11 de abril de 2013)
Chiapas: 16 years of impunity in the case of the forced disappearance of Minerva Guadalupe Pérez Torres (25 June 2012)
Chiapas: Masojá Shucjá, commemoration of the victims of the victims of the conflict of ’95 and ’96 (7 October 2011)
Chiapas: in Masojá Shucjá, memory and demand for justice for the victims of paramilitaries in 1995 and 1996 (7 October 2010)
Chiapas: 14 years after the forced disappearance of Minerva Pérez Torres by Paz y Justicia paramilitaries (30 June 2010)
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