Oaxaca: Death-threats directed at two human-rights defenders

Two human-rights defenders, both of them members of the Comprehensive Committee for Defense of Human Rights Gobixha AC (CODIGO-DH), suffered harassment and assault on 8 May, reports Amnesty International (AI).

“Alba Cruz Ramos, human-rights defender, received a threatening text message on 30 April.  It was similar to other threats that she had received previously: in this one, she was called ‘mami’ and told that the senders had unresolved business to finish; they did not attempt to repeat the threat, but instead acted on it.  Alba Cruz Ramos, lawyer and coordinator of the Comprehensive Committee for Defense of Human Rights Gobixha AC (CODIGO-DH), has since 2007 been awarded precautionary measured as ordered by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights so that she be afforded protection in light of the threats she has received due to the work for defending human rights,” as the AI Urgent Action notes.

AI continues: “Another human-rights defender who works with CODIGO-DH, Susana Ramírez, was detained and released after having spent 34 hours incarcerated.  She did not suffer abuses, but CODIGO-DH believes that her arrest was revenge for her work in defense of human rights.  As part of her work in the department of communications in CODIGO-DH, Susana Ramirez has been covering a protest in Oaxaca City during which protestors confronted the municipal police.  Susana Ramirez told the police that she had not been participating the protest, but rather documenting it; nonetheless, she was arrested together with 28 others.  She was held incomunicado for several hours, and was denied the right to speak with her lawyer and her family until 14 hours after her arrest.”

For more information (in Spanish):

México: DEFENSORAS DE LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS, AMENAZADAS, Amnistía Internacional, 8 de mayo de 2013

For more information from SIPAZ (in English):

Oaxaca: Harassment of the offices of Código DH (8 April 2013)

Oaxaca: Harassment and robbery of offices of Consorcio (14 November 2011)

Oaxaca: new intimidation directed at Alba Cruz (18 January 2011)

Chiapas: Denunciation of death-threats and fabrication of evidence on part of PGJE made by those displaced from the Busiljá and Cintalapa ejidos

On 23 April, families who have been displaced from the Busiljá and Cintalapa ejidos (Ocosingo municipality), publicly denounced that agents of the Public Ministry (which belongs to the State Attorney General’s Office of Chiapas, PGJE) in Ocosingo had pressured and threatened Mrs. Elena Morales Gutiérrez to sign a document affirming knowledge of the whereabouts of her daughter Gabriela Sánchez Morales, who was kidnapped in 2011. Regardless, in a denunciation the families claim now that the girl still has not been located.  It should be noted that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has awarded the precautionary measures requested by the family of the minor.  Furthermore, those displaced expressed their disappointment with the lack of execution of penal action against the presumed kidnappers.  In this sense, they indicate that “the PGJE seeks to trick the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights,” given that the PGJE must inform the IACHR on progress in the investigations.

For more information (in Spanish):

Denuncia de los desplazados de Busiljá y Cintalapa (23/04/2013)

Proceso: Procuraduría de Chiapas falsea pruebas sobre el plagio de una niña indígena (25/04/2013)

For more information from SIPAZ (in English):

Chiapas: Civil society expresses its concern for the situation of those displaced from Busiljá (26 February 2013)

Chiapas: Forthcoming actions for the release of Alberto Patishtán

During the month of April there will be held several actions in favor of Alberto Patishtán Gómez, which will include two marches, one on 10 April in the municipal center of El Bosque, and the other on 19 April in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, as undertaken by the Believing People together with the Movement of the People of El Bosque.  The priest Marcelo Pérez, parishioner of Simojovel, has expressed that “we are enraged by the rejection of the motion by the Supreme Court for Justice in the Nation (SCJN), while it has taken on the cases of Florence Cassez and that of the material authors of the massacre of 45 people in Acteal, liberating him, even though they really aren’t innocent,” thus referring to the postponement of decision in the case of Patishtán on the part of the SCJN on 6 March.  Now, all attention is on the Primary Collegiate Tribunal of the Twentieth Circuit, located in the Palace of Federal Justice in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, which will receive the documents on the case of Patishtán so as to decide on his motion for recognition of innocence.

Amnesty International (AI) has called on the justices of this Tribunal to “respond in an exemplary way” that establishes jurisprudence in cases such as that of Alberto Patishtán Gómez, “so that in the future there be averted the injustice to which he has been subjected.”  In AI’s opinion, the SCJN should have resolved the case in Patishtan’s favor, though it did not.  AI also noted that these same justices have the obligation of impartially evaluating the evidence presented by the defense, in accordance with international obligations that are integrated into the Mexican Constitution.In an article in La Jornada, Cecilia Santiago Vera details the type of police habits which invalidate the terms of ratified human-rights accords: “Forced entry, illegal search of homes, while no crime is in progress and without any judicial order; the detention and movement of police agents without arrest orders; the violence, death-threats, interrogations and abuses without the presence of a rights-defender and so the receipt of self-incrimination and signed declarations that are not read; though these be painful and embarrassing to recognize, such are the practices that continue in this country called Mexico.  Torture as well.”

For more information (in Spanish):

Anuncian peregrinación en Tuxtla para exigir la libertad del profesor Patishtán (La Jornada, 3 de abril de 2013)

Cambio, continuidad e impartición de justicia (La Jornada, 3 de abril de 2013)

Próximas Acciones por la #LibertadPatishtan (Blog Alberto Patishtan)

Caso Patishtán: AI pide a tribunal colegiado justicia sin discriminación (La Jornada, 27 de marzo de 2013)

For more information from SIPAZ (in English):

Chiapas: “Justice is its opposite,” declares Alberto Patishtán (20 March 2013)

México/Chiapas: SCJN rejects review of case of Alberto Patishtán(20 March 2013)

Mexico/Chiapas: Alberto Patishtán should be immediately released, notes Olga Sánchez Cordero (5 March 2013)

Mexico/Chiapas: The SCJN admits the Patishtán case (12 October 2012)

 

Chiapas: Las Abejas lament release of yet another of those charged for Acteal massacre

During the religious celebration performed in the most recent monthly commemoration of the Acteal massacre, the Las Abejas Civil Society lamented that the Supreme Court for Justice in the Nation (SCJN) has released another indigenous person who had been incarcerated on the charge of having participated in the 22 December 1997 massacre in Acteal.  Las Abejas affirmed that “What we are now living here in Mexico confirms what we Abejas have always said: the organisms of the Mexican justice system do not serve justice but rather the interests of the powerful.”

“As in the case of the paramilitaries released previously, we are told that the reason for his release had to do with failures and violations to ‘due process.’  We think and denounce that this is nothing more than a pretext on the part of the authorities to twist justice in the way that is most convenient to them.”  Demonstrating this claim, Las Abejas indicated that the SCJN had denied review of the case of Alberto Patishtán, given that that case is marked by irregularities; moreover, the SCJN attended to the case of Florence Cassez, who had claimed failures to due process and was so released.  Another example that was mentioned was the “‘false Abejas’ who are playing with Salinas de Gortari so as to avenge Ernesto Zedillo, and a collegiate court immediately grants the motion to permit the continuation of the case against Zedillo in the U.S.”

Las Abejas assert that “the lack of justice and the means in which the authorities use law only for their benefit have resulted in the fact that throughout Mexico, some communities organize themselves for armed self-defense, as in the case of our friends from the Regional Coordination of Communal Authorities of the Mountain and Costa Chica of Guerrero.”  Distinguishing their perspective from that of many authorities and media, Las Abejas noted that “One thing is that people amidst total impunity organize themselves to apply justice according to their own methods, and another very different thing is seen when the government, unsatisfied with using its own repressive apparatus, resorts to using a part of the people who are tricked into repressing their own brothers.”

Finally, Las Abejas closed with saying that they are “seeking other means to obtain the justice that is denied us by the government, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.  But for now we will say that we reject the ‘friendly’ calls made by the Mexican government through the IACHR to our brothers and sisters in Atenco, who have rejected these proposals with the same dignity we shall employ.”

For more information (in Spanish):

Comunicado completo (Sociedad Civil Las Abejas, 22 de marzo de 2013)

Los grupos de autodefensa, resultado de la impunidad en el país, aseguran Las Abejas (La Jornada, 26 de marzo de 2013)

Confían en nuevo Papa (Cuarto Poder, 23 de marzo de 2013)

Abejas lamentan más liberaciones por Acteal (Noticiasnet.mx, 25 de marzo de 2013)

For more information from SIPAZ (in English):

Chiapas: New communique from Las Abejas de Acteal (24 January 2013)

Chiapas: Commemoration of 20th anniversary of Las Abejas and coming 15th anniversary of the Acteal massacre (21 December 2012)

Chiapas: Survivor of Acteal massacre dies (16 November 2012)

Chiapas: the Las Abejas Civil Society denounces reactivation of paramilitaries in its community (12 October 2012)

National-International: Zedillo obtains immunity for the Acteal case(19 September 2012)

 

Guerrero: death-threats directed against Obtilia Eugenio Manuel, president of the OPIM

The National Network of Communication and Urgent Action for Human-Rights Defenders in Mexico has condemned the new death-threats directed against human-rights defender Obtilia Eugenio Manuel, president of the Organization of the Me’phaa Indigenous Peoples (OPIM), based in Ayutla de los Libres.  An anonymous letter was found at midday on 11 February in the OPIM offices which said that “You Obtilia are enjoying precautionary measures, but no matter we will beat you Obtilia and Cuauhtémoc, as you are the leaders… The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights does not protect you from bullets.” It should be remembered that she and all OPIM members enjoy precautionary measures, as awarded by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights (IACHR) in 2009.

The death-threat, as asserts the communique, makes mention that it is not clear that it was soldiers who raped Inés Fernández Ortega, a Me’phaa indigenous woman and member of the OPIM who took her case before the IACHR.  The IACHR in turn released a sentence of condemnation for the Mexican State in October 2010.

The urgent bulletin of the National Network details that “Lamentably, this is not the first time that Obtilia Eugenio has received this type of threat against her life, as related directly to her denunciations of human-rights violations committed in the state of Guerrero.  Obtilia Eugenio has been victimized by permanent harassment and has been forced to leave the state of Guerrero so as to protect her physical and psychological life, as well as that of her family.”

For more information (in Spanish):

Amenazan de muerte a indígena que denunció violación por parte de militares (Proceso, 20 de febrero de 2013)

Boletín de prensa de la Red Nacional de Comunicación y Acción Urgente de Defensoras de Derechos Humanos en México

For more information in Spanish (in English):

Guerrero: Lucio Cabañas’ widow and her sister are murdered (17 July 2011)

Guerrero: The ecologist campesino Javier Torres Cruz is murdered (6 May 2011)

Guerrero – briefs:  Concern for the safety of the inhabitants of La Morena (28 December 2010)

Guerrero: briefs – New threats against leaders of the OPIM; inclusion of resources for La Parota in federal budget; Invitation to the sixth anniversary of Radio Ñomndaa (14 December 2010)

Guerrero: briefs – NGOs present amicus brief to Inter-American Court on case of environmentalists; activist is detained (September 23, 2010)

Guerrero: Torres reappears with signs of torture (29 December 2008)

Mexico: SCJN determines that human-rights violations committed by soldiers are to be judged by civilian tribunals; judges will have to base all sentences in conformity with international agreements

On 12 July, the Supreme Court for Justice in the Nation (SCJN) determined unanimously that the human-rights violations committed by soldiers will have to be sanctioned by civilian tribunals.  The decision by the maximum tribunal of justice was had within the context of the continuation of the sentence by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights (IACHR) against the Mexican State in the case of Rosendo Radilla, a sentence that requires Mexico to reform its Code of Military Justice so as to harmonize it with international human-rights agreements.  Both representatives of political parties as well as of civil-society organizations celebrated the decision as ‘historical.’  With this was ended the divergence in legal matters, given that Article 13 of the Mexican Constitution establishes that in crimes committed by soldiers in which is involved a civilian, such will be judged not by military tribunals; regardless, Article 57 of the Code of Military Justice contradicts this constitutional directive.  Olga Sánchez Cordero, minister of SCJN, affirmed in media that the IACHR sentence is “obligatory” for the Mexican State, thus opposing an “orienting” interpretation, as has been expressed by the voices of the Ministries of Governance (Segob), National Defense (Sedena) and Navy (Semar).  There still remains to be had a reform of the Code of Military Justice to observe the IACHR sentence, a task that corresponds to the legislative branch.

In the same session of the SCJN, in a 6 to 3 vote, the court declared that all Mexican judges can analyze and interpret the laws applicable to concrete cases so that their sentences do not contradict the Constitution or international human-rights conventions.  With this they are obligated to analyze the compatibility of a given norm with respect to the constitutional dispositions and of international agreements signed and ratified by the Mexican State.

For more information (in Spanish):

• Red TDT: OSC celebran las resoluciones de SCJN sobre derechos humanos y jurisdicción militar (13 July 2011)
• Red TDT: La decisión de la SCJN empieza a restablecer los controles civiles sobre las Fuerzas Armadas (13 July 2011)
• La Jornada: Militares que violan garantías serán juzgados por civiles: SCJN (13 July 2011)
• La Jornada: Se trabajará para aplicar ese criterio orientador: Sedena, Marina y SG (13 July 2011)
• La Jornada: Se abona a que termine la impunidad y la justicia llegue a más casos, dice la CNDH (13 July 2011)
• La Jornada: Antecedentes del caso Rosendo Radilla (14 July 2011)
• La Jornada: Obligatoria, la sentencia de la CIDH sobre caso Radilla: ministra Sánchez (14 July 2011)
• La Jornada: En 20 meses, 31 denuncias de CNDH contra militares(14 July 2011)
• La Jornada: Fuero militar y derechos humanos (14 July 2011)

Más información de SIPAZ:

• Guerrero: briefs – failure of Mexican State in Radilla case (21 June 2011)
• Guerrero – briefs – Tierra Caliente is second-highest national location in number of feminicides; SCJN will analyze recommendations of the Inter-American Court in the case of Radilla (14 September 2010)

Guerrero: The IACHR’s sentence in the Cabrera García and Montiel Flores is published

Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera @ El Universal

The Secretary of Governance (Segob) published on Tuesday 7 June in the Official Diary of the Federation (DOF) the sentence handed down by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights (IACHR) in the case of Cabrera García and Montiel Flores against Mexico, in which this international organism condemned the Mexican State and demanded that it pay reparations due to the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of these two.  The sentence finds the state responsible for the abuses directed against Teodoro Cabrera García and Rodolfo Montiel Flores while they found themselves detained in the custody of Army soldiers.  Furthermore, due to the lack of expeditious presentation before a judge and for the irregularities throughout the legal process.  The IACHR finds the Mexican State guilty of having engaged in insufficient investigations into denunciations of torture, as well as the use of military courts within the investigation of human-rights violations committed in 1999.

These two ecologist-campesinos who worked to halt illegal logging in the sierra of Petatlán were detained by the army on 2 May 1999 in Pizotla, Guerrero, and were subjected to five days of torture and abuse before being presented to a judge who found them guilty of carrying firearms and cultivating marijuana.

For more information (in Spanish):

Gobierno mexicano acata fallo de la Corte IDH por caso campesinos ecologistas, EPA-European Pressphoto Agency, 7 June 2011

Estado mexicano publica sentencia de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos por caso de campesinos ecologistas, Periodismo transversal, 8 June 2011

Cabrera García y Montiel Flores vs México 26 de noviembre de 2011, SEGOB, 7 June 2011

Sentencia de la CIDH caso Cabrera García y Montiel Flores vs. México, 26 November 2010

Publican en el DOF sentencia de CIDH, La Jornada, 8 June 2011
For more information from SIPAZ (in English):

Guerrero: briefs – New threats against leaders of the OPIM; inclusion of resources for La Parota in federal budget; Invitation to the sixth anniversary of Radio Ñomndaa (14 December 2010)

Guerrero: briefs – NGOs present amicus brief to Inter-American Court on case of environmentalists; activist is detained (September 23, 2010)

Oaxaca: provisional measures are requested for those displaced from San Juan Copalá, and MULT demands the clarification of the death of Pazos Ortiz

On Tuesday 26 October, the Center for Human Rights and Assessment of Indigenous Peoples (CEDHAPI) and the Bartolomé Carrasco Center for Human Rights (Barca) “urgently” requested before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) the granting of provisional measures for the displaced 135 residents of the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copalá, located in the northwestern Triqui region of the state of Oaxaca, who had previously received precautionary measures from the IACHR on 7 October.  In their petition to the IACHR, CEDHAPI and Barca noted that Omeheira López Reyna, director of the Institution for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights from the Secretary for Governance, had not to date responded to the requests sent by both organizations.  They demanded that a meeting be held to discuss the implementation of the precautionary measures; it is precisely in light of the ignoring of such demands that CEDHAPI and Barca requested the provision of provisional measures, which would, according to them, represent “measures of protection for cases of extreme gravity and urgency, when it is necessary to avoid irreparable damage to people.”

In other news, members of the Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULT) have continued participating in road-blocks in several municipalities in the state of Oaxaca following the murder of their leader Heriberto Pazos Ortiz in Oaxaca de Juárez on 23 October.  In a press conference last week, members of MULT’s political commission demanded the clarification of the circumstances surrounding the killing of Pazos Ortiz, noting that “the State has undertaken a dirty war against social organizations and MULT; it seeks to destabilize the Triqui region to justify its militarization of it.” They added that soldiers had arrived to the Triqui communities of San Miguel Copala and Llano Aguacate, sympathetic to MULT, on Saturday 30 October.

For more information (in Spanish):

NGOs request intervention of the IACHR in the case of San Juan Copala (Proceso, 26 October)

Provisional measures for 135 persons from San Juan Copala (CIMAC, 2 November)

CEDHAPI-Barca petition to the IACHR

The Triqui movement will intensify its protests in Oaxaca and Mexico City starting today (La Jornada, 4 November)

MULT demands the clarification of the death of its leader (La Jornada, 29 October)

Ombudsman from Oaxaca has not yet opened file on killings of Triquis (La Jornada, 5 November)

For more information from SIPAZ (in English):

Oaxaca: Heriberto Pazos Ortiz, leader and founder of MULT, is killed (26 October)

Oaxaca: new ambush in Triqui region against individuals who had been granted precautionary measures by the IACHR (20 October)

Chiapas: Indigenous Tzeltal women raped by the Mexican Army accept “compensation” with conditions

On 4 June 1994, four sisters, aged 12, 13, and 14, were arrested together with their mother, Delia Pérez de González, by a group of soldiers at a checkpoint in the municipality of Altamirano.  They were beaten and raped on various occasions by soldiers whiletheir mother was tortured and forced to witness the sexual violence committed against her daughters.

On 30 June 1994, the sisters presented a denunciation before the Federal Attorney General’s Office, which rejected their standing and subsequently send the case to a military tribunal (PGJM).  The Secretary of National Defense denied the events, and the case was archived in 1996 under the pretext that the necessary investigations had not been carried out to continue with the case.

Two years later the case was presented to the Inter-American Court on Human Rights (IACHR), which took it on in November 1999.  In April 2001 the IACHR found the Mexican State guilty and recommended that the events be investigated comprehensively, impartially, and effectively within the common Mexican court-system (civil), to determine the responsibility of the soldiers as well as compensation for suffered losses.  As was explained by Mercedes Olivera Bustamante, founder of and adviser to the Center for Women’s Rights in Chiapas, during the press-conference, the IACHR did not send the Mexican State an order but rather a recommendation, given that Mexico had accepted the IACHR’s jurisdiction beginning in 1998, 2 years before the presentaiton of the complaint.  9 years later, the recommendation in question has not been carried out.

16 years after the events, the governor of Chiapas, Juan Sabines Guerrero, offered 500,000 pesos to each one of the sisters as compensation, in addition to permanent medical insurance, education-scholarships for their children, and other projects.

The González Pérez sisters responded to the proposal thusly: “We accept this proposal as being the sole evidence that demonstrates that the Mexican government publicly recognizes its responsibility in light of the rape of our bodies, our rights, and our dignity.  Regardless, we also request that the damages suffered by our mother also be recognized.” They added that they “will not accept to be present in any public act so that the gobernment use our word in its favor.  Neither will we accept the programs that are offered because they do not resolve the actual problems of the people; we ourselves are now organized in our communities to resolve [these problems] [...].  We demand and will always demand that the soldiers who hurt us be punished, that their responsibility be investigated and determined by common-law trials and not soldiers, as has been the case to date [...].  We also demand the immediate withdrawal of soldiers from our communiites in Chiapas, because they continue to rape women, bring prostitutition, cause terror, and hurt people.”

They concluded thusly: “Now, as in 1994, we strongly condemn the actions taken by the Army against our bodies and our hearts, when we pass through the counter-insurgent checkpoint in Altamirano, Chiapas.  These acts, which violate our rights, demonstrate the politics of terror that has been employed by the army against the people of Chiapas, using women as an objective of war.  For the same reason we continue and will continue to struggle against the actions of the government that seek to silence the just demands of our comrades.  We will not stop demanding that the acts of the army against hte rights of the people be judged by civil authorities, because this is the only way that will recognize their responsibility.  We demand that they be punished according to the law, and that their blame not be covered-up with the pretext of national security.  This is necessary to avoid the continuation of the army’s violation of the rights of our people and their autonomy.”

For more information (in Spanish):

Press release (letter signed by the González Pérez sisters and their mother, 20 October 2010)

Indigenous accept government’s offer (Cuarto Poder, 21 October)

The story of three indigenous girls raped by soldiers (Proceso, 20 October 2010)

Web-site of the González Pérez Sisters Committee: https://hermanasgonzalez.org/

Guerrero: Inter-American Court condemns Mexican State for rapes suffered by two Me’phaa indigenous women

For more information (in Spanish):

The Mexican State is responsible for the torture and rape of Inés y Valentina, and it should compensate and sanction damages: IACHR (Communiqué Tlachinollan, OPIM, and CEJIL, 1 October)

The IACHR sentences will allow Inés and valentina access to the justice denied by Mexico (Communiqué Tlachinollan and CEJIL, 4 October)

Public declaration by Amnesty International (5 October)

2002 rape by soldiers recognized (CIMAC Noticias, 1 October)

That the government admit that soldiers raped me, and that they be imprisoned (La Jornada, 5 October)

Blog on the cases of Inés Fernández and Valentina Rosendo

Sentences handed down by the IACHR

Para más información de SIPAZ:

Guerrero briefs: Valentina before the IACHR- Developments in the case of prisoner of conscience Raúl Hernández (8 June 2010)

Guerrero: briefs – Attack on OPFM leader; new attempt to kidnap daughter of Inés Fernández (3 September 2010)