@Frayba
On November 23rd, the Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Center for Human Rights held a press conference in which it reported that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) approved the Report related to the Viejo Velasco Massacre case.
It recalled that this massacre occurred on November 13th, 2006 with a toll of six extrajudicial executions, two forced disappearances and 36 families in forced displacement, this “within the context of a violent strategy of territorial dispossession undertaken by the Mexican State against indigenous Tseltal and Chole communities, settled in the Lacandon Jungle, in Chiapas.”
In the framework of the admission request, it was documented that the events were perpetrated “by the paramilitary group Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Peasant Rights (OPDIC), accompanied by State Police and other public servants when the families who were living in the Viejo Velasco community, Ocosingo municipality, were forced out.”
Given the ineffectiveness of the Chiapas State Prosecutor’s Office at the time and when the main findings were thanks to a Civil Observation Commission, it was decided to go to the IACHR.
14 years later, Frayba denounced that “impunity prevails, until now the intellectual and material authors of the violations of the rights to life, personal integrity, personal liberty, guarantees, judicial protection, private property have not been investigated, identified, tried and punished. Likewise for forced disappearance and violence against women.” For this reason, Frayba welcomed the decision of the IACHR to follow up on the case.
For more information in Spanish:
CIDH admite el caso de la Masacre de Viejo Velasco (Frayba, 23 de noviembre de 2020)
La Comisión Interamericana admite caso de la Masacre de Viejo Velasco en Chiapas (Pie de Página, 23 de noviembre de 2020)
Retoma CIDH caso (Diario de Chiapas, 24 de noviembre de 2020)
CIDH admite el caso de la Masacre de Viejo Velasco (NVI Noticias, 24 de noviembre de 2020)
For more information from SIPAZ:
Chiapas: 14th Anniversary of Viejo Velasco Massacre (November 16, 2020)
Chiapas: Peregrinación y conmemoración de la masacre de Viejo Velasco después de 13 años de impunidad (November 14, 2019)
Chiapas: Peregrinación Viejo Velasco en Palenque (November 15, 2018)
Chiapas: Peregrinación contra el olvido de la masacre de Viejo Velasco y en defensa de la Madre Tierra (11 de abril de 2016)
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