Oaxaca: Presentation of Report “Prolonged Detention of Human Rights Defenders” to UN

@ OMCT

On August 17th, the report “Prolonged Detention of Human Rights Defenders”, prepared by Oaxaca Consortium, was presented a few days after the 11th anniversary of the arrest of Pablo Lopez Alavez, an indigenous Zapotec environmental defender and activist in the Sierra Norte de Ixtlan, in Oaxaca.

Yolanda Perez Cruz, a human rights defender and wife of Pablo Lopez, was present at the event. She shared the situation in the defense of the forest and water in her community, a struggle that she decided to continue despite the arrest of her husband in 2010. Yolanda recalled how a group of people “with violence and with high-caliber weapons took Pablo out in his vehicle, began to beat him, beat my daughters and my grandson and left us lying there, and took him away.” She also mentioned that after that, she moved to the capital to demand that the Oaxaca government find Pablo “despite not speaking Spanish well and not knowing the city.”

The defender denounced that she has received death threats for which she requested, supported by Oaxaca Consortium, precautionary measures for her safety “because I am already tired of being afraid, but I am not going to back down, I am going to fight, because Pablo is innocent”, the defender reaffirmed.

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a program of the OMCT and the FIDH made a statement to denounce the “numerous and serious violations of their human rights, including the denial of access to professional legal representation ( …) among other violations of his right to due process” and called on the Oaxacan and Mexican authorities for the immediate release of Pablo Lopez, “to put an end to all types of criminalization against them and to guarantee respect for the rights of indigenous peoples.”

For its part, today the Congress of the State of Oaxaca analyzes an injunction addressed to the Judicial Power of the State “to analyze the immediate release of human rights defenders who have exceeded the constitutional period of two years in preventive detention.”

For more information in Spanish:

Diputada local y observatorio internacional exhortan liberar al defensor del bosque Pablo López Alavez (Educa Oaxaca, 24 de agosto de 2021)

México: Once años de injusticia contra Pablo López Alavez (OMCT, 23 de agosto de 2021)

A 11 años de la detención arbitraria del defensor Pablo López Alavez, organizaciones nacionales e internacionales exigen su liberación inmediata(Consorcio Oaxaca, 17 de agosto de 2021)

VIDEO: Detención Prolongada de Personas Defensoras de Derechos Humanos: Informe a la Relatora Especial de la ONU sobre casos de Oaxaca (Consorcio Oaxaca, 17 de agosto de 2021)

INFORME: Detención prolongada de personas defensoras de derechos humanos(Consorcio Oaxaca, agosto 2021)

For more information from SIPAZ: