Mexico: 2019 Highest Number of Attacks on the Press – Articulo 19

On May 26th, the organization in defense of freedom of expression, Articulo 19, presented its 2019 annual report “Dissonance: Voices in Dispute”, which records the highest number of attacks against the press ever in one year: 609 cases, including ten murders of journalists.

The ten journalists killed imply an increase of 12% compared to 2018; in addition, 99% of crimes against communicators remain unsolved and, out of 1,614 cases pending since the creation of the Special Prosecutor’s Office for this sector in 2010, only 14 sentences have been handed down.

“In 43% of the 609 attacks, public officials from the three levels of government were identified as perpetrators, especially at the state and municipal levels, and that the coverage of political and corruption-related information was 56% of the cause of the attacks”, the report states.

“After murder, journalists in Mexico were also victims of illegal entry, threats, attacks on material goods, attacks on digital communications media and computer systems, physical attacks, forced displacement, illegal communications surveillance, torture, as well as illegitimate use of the public power”, it also stresses.

Ana Cristina Ruelas of Articulo 19 expressed that at the beginning of the administration, there were expectations of change due to the presidential commitment to end censorship, due to the public apology to journalist Lydia Cacho, for the budget reduction for the hiring of official advertising; for the preparation of the diagnosis on the failures of the Mechanism to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Defenders. However, throughout 2019, “we witnessed new threats arising from stigmatization of journalistic work from the presidential rostrum.” She stated that the president “made his word an instrument and a weapon of government (and) decided to neutralize or annul anyone who sought to question his version. He confused the resistance of his adversaries and the old elites, with the rationality of those who sought to understand and report on the strategy that supports the narrative.”

Articulo 19 also reported that last year the attacks classified as “illegitimate use of public power” by the three levels of government increased by 100% due to attacks such as “stigmatization through official communication, threats of legal action and smear campaigns.”

The report raises the use of automated accounts on social networks as another point of concern, as well as “a coordinated and sustained articulation of networks to promote the image of governments, local and federal, and reduce the reach of critical and dissident voices”, reflecting in “waves of aggression” against journalists, especially women.

For more information in Spanish:

Registra 2019 la cifra más alta de agresiones contra la prensa en México: Artículo 19, SDP Noticias, 26 de mayo de 2020

AMLO hizo de su palabra un arma de Gobierno: Art. 19; condiciona el debate público y polariza, afirma, Sin Embargo, 26 de mayo de 2020

Más agresiones contra periodistas pese a expectativas con AMLO: Artículo 19, Proceso 26 de mayo de 2020

2019 registró el mayor número de ataques contra periodistas de la última década: Artículo 19, Animal Político, 26 de mayo de 2020

For more information from SIPAZ:

National: Reform Of Law for Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists Debated in Context of Greater Vulnerability in Pandemic (May 26, 2020)

Nacional: ONU-DH condena asesinato de un defensor ambiental (Oaxaca) y un periodista (Sonora); sexta persona defensora y el segundo periodista asesinados en 2020 (May 21, 2020)

National: CNDH Demands Clarification of Crimes against Journalists in Mexico – 90% Remain in Impunity (November 8, 2019)

National/International: UNO Presents Diagnostic of Protection Mechanism of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists (September 2, 2019)

National: Numerous Collectives Call National and International Communities to Back Urgent Action against Maya Train

@ Enlace Zapatista

On May 11th, different groups made a call to support an urgent action against the Maya Train project, since, despite the injunctions filed by the communities of Ocosingo, Palenque and Salto del Agua and the COVID-19 pandemic, work has not been suspended, thus violating the “Right to Health, life and active participation in the defense of their rights.”

It is expected that on May 14th, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) will resolve the definitive suspension of this project, which had been provisionally done by a Federal Judge in previous weeks.

Added to this is the decree published in the Official Gazette of the Federation, where the government announced that it will have the Armed Forces carry out public security tasks, which represents for indigenous peoples and communities not only “unleashing a war against the drug cartels, which impose dispossession of forests, waters, minerals, wood and facilitate the entry of business and government megaprojects, but also face corruption, the links it has with organized crime, its complicity with fuel theft, the acts of repression and dispossession of indigenous peoples and communities, the use of public force to impose megaprojects, the forced displacement that they cause in the communities, according to them to bring order, as well as the murders, rapes and the criminalization of social protest social.”

Given what is happening and could happen, it seeks to promote knowledge and resistance against the project in civil society through actions such as concentrating information on the subject for its dissemination; share the existing poster (s) and/or design new ones that denounce the project and its damages; write and disseminate pronouncements in this regard; identify campaign initiatives by existing Mexican citizen groups to support them, or launch one; promote saturation of phone calls or emails to SCJN, FONATUR, CNDH, etc., speaking out against the project; and, invite networks, groups, contacts, to join in the campaign tasks.

For more information in Spanish:

Diversos colectivos promueven acción virtual contra el proyecto de despojo nombrado tren maya (Enlace Zapatista, 11 de mayo 2020)

Urgen intervención de la CNDH para frenar obras del Tren Maya (Aristegui Noticias, 11 de mayo 2020)

¿Por qué decir ¡NO! al “Tren Maya”? (Los Hijos del Maíz- Tlax, 11 de mayo 2020)

For more information from SIPAZ:

National: Armed Forces Decreed Public Security Duties for Five Years; “Militarism Came out of the Closet” – CSO(May 14, 2020)

Chiapas: Federal Court Orders Suspension of Palenque Section of Maya Train; FONATUR Considers Injunction “Unfair” (May 13, 2020)

National: Online Forum “No to the Misnamed Maya Train”(May 5, 2020)

 

Oaxaca: Organizations, Communities and Movements Demand Suspension of Trans-Isthmus Project (May 2, 2020)

Oaxaca: Illegal Start on Trans-Isthmus Corridor without EIR Denounced (April 28, 2020)

National: Almost 200 Organizations Demand Halt to Maya Train Works During Emergency; AMLO Confirms Megaprojects Will Continue (April 25, 2020)

 

Chiapas: Death Threats against Defenders of Life and Territory in Chicomuselo Denounced

We are sharing the statement of the “Samuel Ruiz Garcia” Committee for the Promotion of the Defense of Life:

Chicomuselo, Chiapas. January 31st, 2020.

Announcement.

TO THE THREE LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT

TO THE MEDIA

TO THE HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS

TO RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS

TO PUBLIC OPINION

PERSONAL INTEGRITY OF THOSE WHO DEFEND LIFE AND TERRITORY IN LAZARO CARDENAS MUNICIPALITY OF CHICOMUSELO CHIAPAS AT RISK.

The “Samuel Ruiz García” Committee for the Promotion and Defense of Life, expresses its concern at the death threats directed at residents of the Lazaro Cardenas ejido municipality of Chicomuselo, Chiapas, it is presumed that these are carried out by residents of the same locality represented by the ejido commissioner JOSE ANTONIO RAMIREZ HERNANDEZ.

According to information gathered by this committee, the events derive from the division of ejidatarios given the proposal of the ejido commissioner to distribute common land on November 29th, 2019, when they decided to leave the General Assembly before the imposition for the distribution of these lands, however, on that same date the few attendees made the appointment of their Municipal Agents, a situation that caused even more discontent of the population in general.

Days later, on December 2nd of that same year, 55 ejidatarios and 342 residents met who, after agreeing to the intervention of the Agrarian Attorney to review the issue of the distribution of communal lands, decided to appoint their own municipal agents with the participation of the general population, a situation that to date has kept the opposing group headed by the ejido commissioner discontent.

On December 17th, 2019, staff of the Agrarian Attorney’s Office presented themselves to the Assembly of ejidatarios where both groups participated, clarifying that the distribution of communal lands is not appropriate, since the approval of the majority of ejidatarios is needed and because it is a forest area that must be preserved for the environment.

Before the designation of municipal agents in both groups, the Municipal City Council decided that through the ejido commissioner and the Municipal Agents a general meeting will be convened where neighbours and ejidatarios will participate for the election of Municipal Agents, however, in that meeting, which a representation of the City Council attended, about 350 people were present between ejidatarios and neighbours, but not the group of ejidatarios represented by the Commissioner, so a second meeting was convened leaving forth January 30, 2020 at 3:00 pm, at which the commissioner’s group did not appear again, nor representatives of the City Council.

It should be noted that minutes later City Council employees reported that when they headed to the town of Lazaro Cardenas at the bridge, near the Bella Vista clinic, a group of people was already waiting who, in addition to sticks, carried firearms, firing several shots on seeing the City Hall staff who immediately decided to return to Chicomuselo so as not to put themselves in danger.

On the same day, according to information that this committee has, text messages with death threats circulated on social networks with the phrase “the secretary will come to want to appoint municipal agents, but he confessed to us that it is the order of the priest of Chicomuselo” “We are going to make a blockade  and you are going to see a mess immediately.” “Those who can fall first are Adolfo Moreno, Aurel, Ricardo, Israel, the municipal secretary and a jurist who is from Catholic human rights.” It should be noted that of the people mentioned, some of them are servants committed to the pastoral work that the San Pedro and San Pablo parish have been doing for years in Chicomuselo, which is presided over by the pastor Eleazar Juarez Flores, threatened with death on several occasions for his work in defense of life, land and territory.

Likewise, people threatened with death in coordination with the community have taken actions in favor of the life of the community such as: surveillance, complaints about the sale of alcohol, actions against mining, among others, a situation that keeps the other group unhappy since people who sympathize with the commissioner’s group have caused various conflicts in the community.

For all the above, and given the constant threats, harassment and persecution against those who defend life and human rights, we consider the intervention of the three levels of government urgent to pay for the reconstruction of the social fabric in that community, and to avoid confrontations among peasants for an administrative and competitive matter of the majority of the population and not exclusive to ejidatarios, as it is not an agrarian matter.

For more information from SIPAZ:

Chiapas: Piden parar los megaproyectos en un encuentro en Chicomuselo (December 23, 2019)

Chiapas : OSC denuncian militarización de los espacios civiles a una año de la inauguración de un cuartel en Chicomuselo (November 11, 2019)

Chiapas: Frayba denuncia actos de espionaje contra defensoras del territorio en Chicomuselo (May 29, 2019)

Chiapas: Denuncian vigilancia militar en Chicomuselo (March 27, 2019)

Chiapas/International: Urgent Action – Canadian Embassy before Courts for Undue Intervention in Chicomuselo Mining Conflict (March 27, 2019)

Chiapas : BriCos inician trabajo de documentación en Chicomuselo ante militarización y persistencia de proyectos mineros (February 9, 2019)

National: Fourth Open Letter to Cuarta Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador from Javier Sicilia

Photo @ Somoselmedio

Dear president,

You know that I am a poet, a poet who, for very painful reasons that you also know and that are related to what brought me along with others to your home, stopped practising the craft of the poem. However, poetry – which is a gift, a grace – remains in me and has not stopped accompanying me, along with the suffering of the victims and through the voice of other poets, along this path. It, from time immemorial, guards the meanings of the tribe and becomes present when those meanings are corrupted or falter in public life. The Nabi, who the tradition of the West are called prophets (“those who speak in the name of …” is their etymological meaning) proliferated when the Hebrew people had a descendant of kings, of human beings, we could say, of State. Its function – beyond what Judeo-Christian theology attributes to them and from what popular imagery has attributed them with – was not to guess the future, but to remind the king and the people of fundamental and old truths like the mountains, which were forgotten or lost. Remember, President, Natan and his relationship with David. A heavy job, sometimes ungrateful, that forces the poet to leave his solitude – the privileged scope of his work – and sometimes to suffer from misunderstanding, insult, disqualification and defamation. Remember, President, Jeremiah.

Despite this, the poet, wrote Albert Camus, “in any circumstance of his life, dark or provisionally famous, constrained by tyranny or free to express himself” finds a community that justifies it on condition that, as we have done now walking to your home, assume those two tasks that constitute the greatness and weight of one’s vocation: the service of truth, justice, dignity and freedom. His nature as voice of the tribe cannot accommodate lies, servitude or crime, because where they prevail, as they prevail today in our nation, horror and destruction of common life grow.

That is why despite my personal weaknesses, the possibility that you refuse to receive us, the nobility of that vocation has led me to walk again, next to others, to resist, to give a place to the meaning that the word holds and look again for truth, justice and peace that one day, on November 14th, 2018, at the Tlatelolco University Cultural Center (CCUT), you and the victims agreed, that you forgot and that, in so much horror, so much impunity and death, you owe us and owe yourself, President.

Therefore, I am going to summarize, through some verses, what we have come to tell you today. They are neither mine nor any of the poets who have accompanied me. But they belong to the river of tradition that goes back to the Hebrew Nabis, the Hellenic Rapsodas and the Nahua Xochikuikani. They are from Maria Mercedes Carranza, a Colombian poet, killed in 2003, who suffered, along with her people, horrors similar to those that our country has been living for almost two decades:

“Everything is ruined in this house, / the embrace and music are in ruins, / fate every morning, laughs are ruins; / tears, silence, dreams. / The windows show destroyed landscapes, / flesh and ash get confused on faces, / in mouths the words stir with fear./ In this house we are all buried alive. ”

Our house, Mexico, and the flag that represents it and that we have carried and brought with us throughout these days of long walking, is, like the house of Mercedes Carranza, full of violence, blood, death, disappearances, graves, lies and impunity; it is plagued with heinous crimes against which language fails; its roads, its squares, its enclosures are taken by soulless beings that, with the support of state officials and companies, corrupt, disappear and kill our children, our women, our young people, our old people, dig sinister graves, they threaten us and exhibit their atrocities to inhibit our vital reactions.

We know you are not responsible for it, President. You inherited this horror from administrations that only had imagination for violence, impunity and corruption. But the fact that you have turned your back on the agenda of truth, justice and peace as a priority of the nation, an agenda to which you committed on September 14th, 2018 and that you asked us to create together with the SEGOB; the fact that you do not heed the call of the indigenous peoples to stop the megaprojects, whose base is neoliberal and, therefore, destructive of the land and community and peoples’ lives; the fact that migration is criminalized; the fact that in your morning you use a language that, far from calling for unity, polarizes the nation; the fact that you have abandoned, disarticulated and questioned the institutions that citizens create to attend to victims (the Victim Assistance Commission, the National Search Commission and the CNDH); the fact of reducing peace to a security issue and abandoning truth and justice, the State’s networks of complicity with organized crime have been articulated, and their costs in pain and death have been too high: about 35,000 murders added to the 61,000 disappeared – more than 5,000 in the last year -, to the hundreds of thousands of victims inherited from past bad administrations – practically all of them still do not know the truth and much less justice – to an even greater and still inaccurate number of tortured and displaced, and the serious mistreatment of Central American migrants and indigenous peoples.

This has nothing to do with the good things you have undertaken. It has to do with a reality that goes beyond ordinary institutions and that if it is not assumed in the dimension of its national emergency and its humanitarian tragedy, it will spoil that good your government seeks. Without truth – let’s repeat it again – there will be no justice or reconciliation or amnesty or peace or transformation. All there will be is more hell.

You ask us for more time to seek security, but you don’t talk about truth or justice. After the massacre of the LeBaron family, which once again brought the dimension of the horror and tragedy of the country to the public consciousness, there is only time to face it with a State policy that, given the networks of complicity confined in the State, it is based on extraordinary mechanisms of truth and justice – a truth that must weave, based on those mechanisms, with the institutions created to confront it; a truth that must also happen for the respect to the indigenous autonomies, to the migrants and the strengthening of the municipalities. A State policy that, as a priority of the country, calls for the unity of the nation and the work of all (governments, victims, social organizations, churches, parties, universities, unions, companies, citizens). A State policy to which you, President, committed yourself more than a year ago, which victims, organizations, academia and experts worked with SEGOB and that today more than ever urgently needs to be carried out. A State policy that goes beyond, as is evident, the Security Cabinet and that must, therefore, be assumed and promoted by you who unfortunately you are not present because of serious and unfortunate prejudices towards the victims and the suffering of the country.

We must not repeat the past, President. That past has destroyed us and continues to destroy us. You have to create the new that preserves life. A true and authentic transformation of the country must be based on truth, justice and peace.

We know it is not easy. It is never easy to face a crisis of civilization of the size that we suffer today with radical measures. But not doing so from the root of truth and justice will make violence reign forever over a field of ossuaries, dispossession and fear. The truth, as Ricardo Raphael recently pointed out, “is the one that must prevail so that reality is known, so that the facts are exposed, so that the arguments weigh, so that justice is done and violence cannot be repeated.”

We, when walking here, have fulfilled our duty, which the word and poetry, which guard the meaning of a tribe, call us and which we will always defend. You, on the other hand, as President, have the dilemma of continuing to walk towards the horror that the first steps of your government have gone through or of uniting and taking us all through a State policy based on truth, justice, respect and the strengthening of the indigenous autonomies and of the municipalities, towards a true transformation, towards that hope to which one day you called us and which today as a bloody nation summons you.

While you respond to this dilemma in which the fate of everyone is played, we leave you with the Security Cabinet, in addition to these words, the verses of David Huerta, Tomas Calvillo and Maria Mercedes Carranza, who accompanied the press conferences and press releases of our walk, the voice of poetry that accompanied us in that of its poets along the way, to meditate in the silence of your heart the meaning. We also leave you the documents with the Transitional Justice proposals and, together with the Belisario Domínguez medal, which Mrs. Rosario Ibarra left in your custody, the symbol of the homeland that today is shot, bloodied, inverted, kidnapped, obscured by murders, disappearances, dispossession and destruction of lands, communities and aberrant crimes.

Return it to us along with the restored homeland as you promised to the victims and indigenous peoples during your campaign and to the victims when we met on May 8th at the Memory and Tolerance Museum and, as President-elect, on September 14th at CCUT. It is time, President, to put a real stop to so much pain, to so much death, to humiliation, to such a lie; time for suffering to beat again the heart and the earth can flourish; time to unite the bloody fractures of the country and to make with everyone the truth, justice and peace that we need so much. It is time to put the new wine in new wineskins.

You decide, President, on which side of history you want to walk to.

Javier Sicilia

Chiapas: Impunity Denounced One Year after the Murder of Defender Sinar Corzo

@Web

On January 3rd, one year after the murder of the human rights defender Sinar Corzo Esquinca in Arriaga (Costa de Chiapas), friends and family demonstrated in this city to demand justice, denouncing that although there are several detainees as material and intellectual perpetrators, nobody has been sentenced to date.

They recalled that currently four people are linked to the case of the events: Apolinar “N”, father-in-law of the then mayor David Parada, who resigned from his post and is a fugitive from justice, as well as Fernando “N”, Julio ” N “and Artemio” N “, employees of Apolinar.

According to the relatives, the trial continues and there is a risk that they will obtain their freedom since “according to data from the Zero Impunity organization, in Chiapas 99% of killings remain without punishment,” they stressed.

“We continue to demand detention, prosecution, trial and sentencing for all persons involved in the crime. We cannot afford to also be victims of impunity statistics,” they said.

They acknowledged, however, that “the State Attorney General’s Office, to our knowledge, has conducted an exhaustive investigation, although they are still outstanding issues, but we trust that in the coming days and months they will be settled.”

They urged the judiciary of the state “to do its job and show that it changed, that in Chiapas there is no more impunity, that in Chiapas the three powers contribute and work to build a true rule of law.”

Luis Arbey Perez, member of the The Colossus of Stone Citizen Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, a center to which Sinar Corzo belonged, denounced not only the lack of justice, but also the increase in attacks and defamations against said Center, its members, as well as family members of the defender.

For more information in Spanish:

A un año del crimen de Sinar Corzo, familiares y amigos salen a las calles para exigir justicia (Proceso, 3 de enero de 2020)

Marchan en Chiapas a un año del asesinato del activista Sinar Corzo (La Jornada, 3 de enero de 2020)

A un año del homicidio de activista, eigen justicia (El Universal, 4 de enero de 2020)

Exigen justicia para Sinar Corzo; un año de completa impunidad alegan activistas (Chiapas Paralelo, 5 de enero de 2020)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Chiapas : Orden de aprehensión contra ex alcalde de Arriaga por posible autoría intelectual de homicidio del defensor Sinar Corzo (8 de febrero de 2019)

Chiapas: Detienen a tres presuntos responsables del asesinato del defensor Sinar Corzo Esquinca, incluyendo suegro del alcalde de Arriaga (18 de enero de 2019)

Chiapas: Movilizaciones para exigir justicia en el caso del asesinato defensor de derechos humanos Sinar Corzo. Todas las líneas de investigación siguen abiertas afirma fiscal.

(15 de enero de 2019)

Chiapas: Asesinan al defensor de derechos humanos Sinar Corzo Esquinca (4 de enero de 2019)

Chiapas: denuncian criminalización de defensores medioambientales en San Cristóbal de Las Casas (28 de diciembre de 2018)

Nacional : 161 defensores y 40 periodistas asesinados en el sexenio que termina, Red TdT (30 de noviembre de 2018).

Chiapas/National: Forum in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth Held in New Zapatista Caracol Jacinto Canek

@Radio Pozol

On December 21st and 22nd, the Forum in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth was held in the new Jacinto Canek caracol, at the Cideci/Unitierra facilities in San Cristobal de Las Casas. Convened by the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), the Indigenous Government Council (CIG) and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), it was attended by more than 900 people from 25 Mexican states and 24 countries.

The welcome was given by the former candidate for the presidency and spokesperson of the CIG, María de Jesus Patricio Martinez, Marichuy. During the event, presentations and testimonies were made by peoples and organizations in Mexico, as well as of indigenous peoples of Colombia, the Mapuche people of Chile and Kurdish women, with an emphasis on the impacts that megaprojects have on the territory and Mother Earth. We also heard stories of struggle and resistance to continue defending life through organization, collectivity, autonomy, legal action, direct action or the strengthening of one’s own cultures.

It is also worth mentioning the participation of 20 men and women from the Zapatista support bases that explained how for more than 20 years they have made progress in consolidating their own forms of government without omitting the difficulties they have encountered along the way. “The ‘Fourth Annihilation’ will destroy everyone, there will be a lot of sadness, but it gives us courage and anger to see how they continue to deceive our brothers, the situation that comes with the new government that is dispossession. Therefore, given this, we can only resist and face the war of the Fourth Annihilation,” said one of the Zapatista delegates. He also said that “to fight or organize you do not need to be a Zapatista, the important thing is to fight and face the bad system, let’s carry out a great task and take you to work with other colleagues, that is the only way to defend what we have.”

At the end of the event, some agreements were made among which is the convening of Days in Defense of the Territory and Mother Earth “Samir Somos Todxs”, for February 20th, 21st and 22nd, 2020.

The next day, the Jacinto Canek caracol was formally inaugurated, in the facilities of the Cideci/Unitierra, in San Cristobal de Las Casas, from where the Good Government Council will work as “Flower of our word, light of our peoples that reflects for all”.

For more information in Spanish:

Foro en Defensa del Territorio y la Madre Tierra [audios y fotos] (Radio zapatista, 24 de diciembre de 2019)

Indígenas acuerdan conformar modelo económico paralelo al capitalista (Aristegui Noticias, 23 de diciembre de 2019)

Bases del EZLN advierten que seguirán resistiendo la “Cuarta Aniquilación” (Proceso, 23 de diciembre de 2019)

EZLN: al capitalismo no le importa destruirnos; no lo permitamos (La Jornada, 22 de diciembre de 2019)

PROGRAMA DEL FORO EN DEFENSA DEL TERRITORIO Y LA MADRE TIERRA (Enlace zapatista, 20 de diciembre de 2019)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Chiapas/Nacional: se lleva a cabo 4ª Asamblea del CNI-CIG en San Cristóbal de Las Casas (21 de diciembre de 2019)

Chiapas: EZLN – Una Ballena en las montañas del sureste mexicano: Segundo Festival de Ciné zapatista (18 de diciembre de 2019)

Chiapas/Nacional : CNI- CIG “vivimos la guerra del capital contra los pueblos del mundo”, convocatoria a la cuarta Asamblea Nacional (8 de noviembre de 2019)

Chiapas/Nacional/Internacional: EZLN invita a participar en el “Combo por la Vida: Diciembre de Resistencia y Rebeldía” (7 de noviembre de 2019)

Chiapas: Las Abejas de Acteal Hold Commenoration 22 Years after Acteal Masacre

@Frayba

On December 21st and 22nd, Las Abejas Civil Society together with the diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas, other civil and social organizations, remembered the 45 victims of the Acteal massacre, which happened 22 years ago, on December 22nd 1997, by a paramilitary group from the same municipality of Chenalho.

The commemoration included several activities, including a pilgrimage, pronouncements, and a mass celebrated by the bishop of the diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas, Rodrigo Aguilar Martinez.

In a statement published the same day, Las Abejas rejected the offer of reparations proposed by the government and urged the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to proceed with the case: “Sisters and brothers who also work for the truth and justice, let’s not be afraid to continue organizing to build peace on our continents and stop the war that the rich and powerful wage against us. We cannot fall into the pitfalls of bad government. Our Civil Society Organization Las Abejas de Acteal does not accept or request a friendly settlement for the Acteal Case because a monetary remedy does not sow precedents so that these heinous acts are not repeated. On the contrary, their goal is to divide us and leave us humiliated. Within the framework of the commemoration of the 22 years of the Acteal Massacre, we insist on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that it already states the merits report of Case 12.790 Manuel Santiz Culebra and Others (Acteal Massacre) to curb impunity and wear down survivors and their families, who have been severely affected by their life project.”

For more information in Spanish:

A 22 años del Crimen de Estado cometido aquí, no hay voluntad política de crear estrategias para que hechos como el de Acteal jamás se repitan. Las Abejas de Acteal, 22 de diciembre de 2019.

A 22 años de la Masacre de Acteal se mantiene viva la resistencia y la esperanza CDH Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, 22 de diciembre de 2019.

Acteal, 22 años de la matanza en Chiaps que cimbró al país El Universal, 23 de diciembre de 2019.

For more information from SIPAZ:

Chiapas: Sociedad Civil Las Abejas de Acteal rechaza solución amistosa en el caso de la masacre de Acteal presentado ante la CIDH marzo 7, 2019

Chiapas : Sociedad Civil Las Abejas denuncia allanamieno de su clínica en Acteal; Concejo Pacifista declara que es un “asunto entre particulares”; Sociedad Civil Las Abejas ratifica “por eso hemos rechazado la solución amistosa, porque traería división” . septiembre 23, 2019

Chiapas: Marcha-peregrinacion de las Abejas de Acteal para exigir justicia verdadera y digna agosto 14, 2019

National: Injunctions against New CNDH President Growing

On December 4th, a judge admitted the injunction case brought by the independent senator Emilio Alvarez Icaza against the flaws that were recorded in the process of appointing Rosario Piedra Ibarra as president of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH in its Spanish acronym). The senator argued that this appointment violated article 9 of the Law of the CNDH itself, which states that one of the requirements to fill the position is “not to perform, or have held a position of national or state leadership, in any political party in the year prior to his appointment.” The National Electoral Institute (INE in its Spanish acronym) has confirmed that Piedra Ibarra was the national advisor of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA, the party in power) until November 14th. In the arguments for the case, Alvarez Icaza also stated that the appointment did not respect Article 10 of the aforementioned legislation, since the vote of two thirds of the members present in the House of Senators was not reached.

Although it is the first injunction that has been successful, it is far from being the first complaint linked to the controversial vote that gave rise to the appointment. Three former candidates for the presidency of the CNDH (Michael Chamberlin Ruiz, Carlos Perez Vazquez and Laura Castellanos Mariano), also presented an injunction stating that in the election process that was followed in the Senate “five constitutional articles were violated.”

Opposition lawmakers also did the same and contemplate, if necessary, filing a criminal complaint against Piedra “for false statements”, “since she swore under oath to tell the truth that in a year before the election she did not hold the executive position of any party and instead the National Electoral Institute confirmed that she is registered as a member of MORENA State Council in Nuevo León,” said Kenia Lopez, president of the Senate Human Rights Commission.

Even members of the Advisory Council of the CNDH expressed their disagreement by resigning their position, a situation that had no precedent. This includes Mariclaire Acosta Urquidi, Maria Ampudia Gonzalez, Angelica Cuellar and Maria Olga Noriega Saenz who expressed in a letter that “an ombudsperson without legitimacy will be unable to establish a valid interlocution with the different actors involved in the observation, protection and promotion of human rights, nor can they generate confidence or legal certainty necessary for their mission.”

Non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International, Fundar and Articulo 19, in addition to about twenty associations grouped in the #CNDH Autonomous Collective, and even the UN itself have questioned the same process.

For more information in Spanish:

Juez admite amparo contra designación de Rosario Piedra (MVS Noticias, 4 de diciembre de 2019)
AUTORIDADES, LEGISLADORES Y ONGs… EN SU CONTRA (Vertigo Político, 4 de diciembre de 2019)

Admiten amparo contra designación de Ombudsperson (El Heraldo de México, 4 de diciembre de 2019)

Ex candidatos a la CNDH impugnan ante tribunal federal la presidencia de Rosario Piedra (Aristegui Noticias, 3 de diciembre de 2019)

PRI interpone amparo contra designación de Rosario Piedra en la CNDH (MVS Noticias, 30 de noviembre de 2019)

For more information from SIPAZ:

International: UNHCHR Expresses Doubts over Independence and Autonomy of National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) after Rosario Piedra Ibarra’s Election (November 24, 2019)

National: Rosario Ibarra de Piedra Sworn in as New President of CNDH (November 15, 2019)

National: Process of Voting for Head of CNDH to Return (November 15, 2019)

National: Activist Rosario Piedra Ibarra is elected new president of the CNDH (November 11, 2019)

National: One Year of AMLO Presidency

@Vertigo Politico

On December 1^st President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) offered an hour and a half message before a base filled with more than 100 thousand people, in Mexico City, in the framework of the celebration of his first year of government. He stressed that of the 100 commitments he made in 2018, he already fulfilled 89.

“It is unquestionable that in these first 12 months we have made great progress, but we are still in a transition process, the old still does not just die and the new is not born, but we are not playing, we are not simulating,” he said. He also affirmed that he hopes that in a year “the bases for the construction of a new homeland will already be established. By then, under any circumstances, it will be practically impossible to return to the time of opprobrium that the neoliberal or neoporfirio period meant.” He said that “when we complete two years of government the conservatives can no longer reverse the changes or not be so blunt, they would have to work hard and be very embarrassed to go back to the dark times of corruption, of the Leonine contracts, of the remission of taxes, of electoral fraud, of abandonment of young people, of racism, of contempt for the poor, and of “kill them in their steps” ”.

He listed a series of achievements including the reduction of fuel theft, the creation of 648 thousand new jobs, an increase of 16% of the minimum wage, an annual inflation of 3% the lowest since September 2016, the increase of 2% of the peso against the dollar, the coverage of government programs (half of Mexican households, use at least one program for welfare and in indigenous peoples, 95% of households already have at least one of the supports), among others.

On the issue of security, he questioned that “between 2006 and 2018 the rulers sought to solve insecurity and criminal violence through actions of military and police force, without addressing the substance of the problem,” a strategy that he considered “irresponsible” and that left a “dreadful balance” of dead, missing and a human rights crisis. “This absurd and deranged strategy will not be repeated,” he said.

National and international media especially question the entire AMLO administration for its inability to reduce violence when there were more than 28,000 violent deaths in the country between January and October. Another limitation that is being highlighted more is zero economic growth in this same term when AMLO promised in the campaign that it would be between 2 and 4%.

For more information in Spanish:

México: un año de AMLO en la presidencia (Vídeo, CNN México, 1ero de diciembre de 2019)

El peso mexicano tiene con AMLO su mejor desempeño en 5 sexenios para un primer año de gobierno (Sin Embargo, 1ero de diciembre de 2019)

AMLO reconoce seguridad y falta de crecimiento como pendientes de su primer año (Animal Político, 1ero de diciembre de 2019)

De los 100 compromisos que hice hace un año, he cumplido 89: AMLO (Aristegui Noticias, 1ero de diciembre de 2019)

A un año de gobierno, los aciertos y las fallas de la 4T de AMLO (Aristegui Noticias, 1ero de diciembre de 2019)

Un año de AMLO (El País, 1ero de diciembre de 2019)

Un año de AMLO: lo bueno, lo malo y lo feo (The Washington Post, 1ero de diciembre de 2019)

For more information from SIPAZ:

National: AMLO Presents His First Government Report (September 10, 2019)

Nacional: AMLO cumplió 100 días en el poder; revisa avances en compromisos (12 de marzo de 2019)

National/International: “When Words Are Not Enough” – Amnesty International Report almost One Year after AMLO Takes Office

On November 27th, almost one year after the inauguration of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) as the new president of Mexico, Amnesty International (AI) presented a report entitled “When Words Are Not Enough” in which it takes stock of progress made on the human rights crisis in the country.

“The government of President Lopez Obrador has shown a willingness to move forward partially on some initiatives, especially on the issue of disappearances in the country. However, after a year of his government, there are no substantial changes in the lives of millions of people facing a very serious human rights crisis that has lasted for more than a decade. The very high levels of violence that undermine the right to life, the torture that is still widespread, the alarming rates of violence against women, and a militarized security strategy more alive than ever, are a sign of the tragic reality in Mexico,” Erika Guevara Rosas, director for the Americas of Amnesty International, said.

Refarding advances, she considered that the decision of the government in August to recognize the competence of the Committee against Enforced Disappearances of the UN to review communications on individual cases, gave a solution to one of the repeated demands of relatives of missing persons and human rights organizations. “However, this measure has not yet been implemented.”

AI said it sees “a huge incongruity between what the government says and what it then does. It promises a more humane treatment for migrants and in need of international protection, but sends the National Guard to persecute and detain them. It says he will protect human rights defenders and journalists, but publicly discredits them. It is worrisome that human rights violations remain the rule in Mexico and not the exception,” Erika Guevara Rosas added.

Amnesty International concluded that “in order to achieve a substantial change in human rights, the government must stop blaming previous administrations for the situation and, instead, accept responsibility for what is happening in the present and seek solutions to address the serious debts pending in the matter, making sure that any policy of the current administration has human rights and its international obligations as a fundamental basis.”

For more information in Spanish:

Cuando las palabras no bastan (Amnistía Internacional, 27 de noviembre de 2019)

México: Amnistía Internacional alerta sobre la falta de avances en derechos humanos después de un año del nuevo gobierno (Amnistía Internacional, 27 de noviembre de 2019)

“Las palabras no bastan”, la evaluación de AI al gobierno de AMLO en materia de derechos humanos (Proceso, 27 de noviembre de 2019)

México mantiene crisis de derechos humanos en gobierno de AMLO según Amnistía Internacional (El Sol de México, 27 de noviembre de 2019)

Amnistía Internacional califica de “incongruente” la política de derechos humanos de López Obrador (El País, 28 de noviembre de 2019)

For more information from SIPAZ:

International/National: Un Human Rights Committee Issues 48 Human Rights Recommendations for Mexico (November 12, 2019)

National/International: Attacks on Migrant Defenders in Central America, Mexico and U.S. Increase (October 1, 2019)

International/National: UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Expresses Concern over Unresolved Issues in Mexico (September 22, 2019)