Guerrero: Disappearance of Obtilia Eugenio Manuel and Hilario Cornelio Castro Indigenous Activists and Members of OPIM Reported

Obtilia Eugenio Manuel @ E-Consulta

On February 12th, the leaders Obtilia Eugenio Manuel and Hilario Cornelio Castro, members of the Organization of Me’ Phaa Indigenous Peoples (OPIM in its Spanish acronym), were disappeared.

Activist Ericka Zamora Pardo posted on her Facebook page that they disappeared “at approximately 7:40 am on the Tierra Colorada road stretch – El Ocotito, Guerrero.” Obtilia Eugenio is a member of the Council of Community Authorities of Ayutla and has been receiving death threats for several years.

According to the newspaper Sin Embargo, Obtilia Eugenio denounced threats last November “against her and two members of the Municipal Council of Ayutla, of which she is a member of the Justice Commission.”

Since January 14th, 2005, the defender has precautionary measures by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), as a result of threats and harassment that she has suffered due to her role in the defense of the cases of Ines Fernandez Ortega and Valentina Rosendo Cantu. The measures were put in place for the first time in September 2007.

For more information in Spanish:

Solalinde denuncia desaparición de dos activistas; una defendió a indígenas abusadas por militares (El Proceso, 13 de febrero de 2019)

La amenazan a ella y a otros integrantes del Concejo Municipal de Ayutla: Obtilia Eugenio (Sur de Acapulco, 19 de noviembre de 2018)

El padre Solalinde denuncia el secuestro de dos activistas indígenas en carretera de Guerrero (Sin Embargo, 13 de febrero de 2019)

Respuesta de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos a la demanda interpuesta por la Comisión lnteramericana de Derechos Humanos y al escrito de solicitudes, argumentos y pruebas presentado por los peticionarios, respecto al Caso 12.580 Inés Fernández Ortega. (COidh, 13 de diciembre de 2009)

INFORME Nº 94/06 (Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, 21 de octubre de 2006)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Guerrero: Impunity prevails against human-rights defenders (December 18, 2013)

Guerrero: death-threats directed against Obtilia Eugenio Manuel, president of the OPIM (February 26, 2013)

Guerrero: Andrea Eugenio Manuel, indigenous activist and sister to Obtilia, is threatened with death (March 26, 2010)

Guerrero: New Threats against Obtilia Eugenio Manuel, President of the OPIM and Witness in the Inés Fernández Ortega vs. Mexico case (March 17, 2010)

 

 

 

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National/Guerrero: Support Plan for Victims of the Dirty War

Photo @ EllosyNosotros

On February 11th, the Plan of Attention and Reparation for the Victims of Political Violence of the Dirty War was announced in the municipality of Atoyac de Alvarez in Guerrero.

The Executive Commission of Attention to Victims (CEAV in its Spanish acronym), relatives and survivors of victims of the “dirty war”, as well as the governor Hector Astudillo Flores, the president of the CEAV, Jaime Rochin del Rincon, presented the strategy of collective reparation that is intended to be implemented.

“The Care and Reparation Plan for the victims of past political violence in Guerrero seeks to give visibility to those who disappeared, give voice to those who were silenced and recover and reconstruct the social fabric of the communities”, according to information from Proceso.

According to the Economist, Jaime Rochin del Rincon, executive commissioner of the CEAV, acknowledged that, “actions such as forced disappearance, torture and arbitrary detention in Guerrero during the period of the Dirty War, followed a State policy of repression and extermination.”

The strategy emerged from the recommendation 26/2001 endorsed by the National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH in its Spanisg acronym) addressed to the then president of the republic, Vicente Fox, and as well as the proposals included in the Special Report on the Disappearance of Persons and Clandestine Graves in Mexico of the CNDH, presented in 2017.

Through a statement, the CNDH announced that “in assessing the institutional progress represented by the Plan for Attention and Reparation for the Victims of the “Dirty War”, the CNDH established that the Mexican State has an outstanding debt with the victims of disappearance and their families, which will not be paid while the authorities of the three levels of government fail to comply with their basic and fundamental obligation to guarantee minimum conditions of security for peaceful coexistence between people and to put an end to the environment of violence, impunity and illegality that we face.”

For more information in Spanish:

Presentan en Guerrero plan de atención a víctimas de la guerra sucia (Aristegui Noticias, 11 de febrero de 2019)

La CEAV presenta Plan de Atención y Reparación a las Víctimas de la Violencia Política del Pasado (Proceso, 11 de febrero de 2019)

CNDH EL PLAN DE REPARACIÓN A VÍCTIMAS DE LA “GUERRA SUCIA”, QUE ATIENDE LAS PROPUESTAS DE LA RECOMENDACIÓN 26/2001 Y EL INFORME ESPECIAL SOBRE DESAPARICIÓN DE PERSONAS Y FOSAS CLANDESTINAS DE ESTE ORGANISMO NACIONAL (CNDH, 11 de febrero de 2019)

Recomendación 26/2001 (CNDH, 2001)

INFORME ESPECIAL SOBRE DESAPARICIÓN DE PERSONAS Y FOSAS CLANDESTINAS EN MÉXICO. (CNDH, 2017)

For more information from SIPAZ:

National: INAI Orders SENEDA to Submit Information on Generals Linked to “Dirty War” (June 26, 2018)

International/National: IACHR presents report regarding right to truth which includes the case of the “Dirty War” in Mexico (December 14, 2014)

The Peoples’ Permanent Tribunal condemns Mexican State for crimes against humanity (October 11, 2014)

Chiapas/International: Pueblo Sin Fronteras Reports Disappearance of Member

@Programa de Asuntos Migratorios de IBERO

On February 7th, 2019, the disappearance of Carlos David Cueva Ramirez, a member of Pueblos Sin Fronteras, was reported. He was last seen on February 4th or 5th, in Mapastepec, Chiapas. He had spent two weeks in this state where he accompanied the migrant caravans that entered the country between January and February.

It was also reported that two other members of Pueblo Sin Fronteras were detained by the federal police. Although there were rumors saying that Cueva Ramirez was also arrested, the National Institute of Migration and the Attorney General of the Republic have declared that they have no record of it. According to reports prior to his disappearance, he was harassed by workers of the INM (National Institute of Migration) and by the federal police in Tapachula. It is also worrying that the disappearance of Cueva Ramirez occurred after acts of xenophobic violence in Tecun Uman and Tapachula by the local population towards migrants.

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, an organization formed after 2000, denounced the “criminalization against migrants who assumed a leadership role in the accompaniment of migrants who arrived at the border of Mexico by the Suchiate, from mid-January of this year until today.”

For more information in Spanish:

Denuncia Pueblos Sin Fronteras desaparición de uno de sus integrantes (La Jornada, 7 de febrero de 2019)

Denuncian desaparición de activista David Cueva, en Chiapas (El Sol del Centro, 7 de febrero de 2019)

Denuncian desaparición de integrante de ONG en Chiapas (Informador, 7 de febrero de 2019)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Internacional/México: Estalla la Violencia Xenófoba a migrantes en Tecún Umán 28 de enero de 2019.

Nacional/Internacional: más de 9 mil migrantes que entraron en caravanas siguen sin mucha posibilidad de cumplir con su sueño 7 de diciembre de 2018.

Nacional/Internacional: 164 países aprueban el Pacto Mundial para La Migración de Naciones Unidas 11 de diciembre de 2018.

Nacional/Internacional: Caravana Viacrucis Migrante 2018 llega a EUA 10 de mayo de 2018.

Chiapas: Two Members of Movement for Welfare, Peace and Common Good of Amatan and Independent Revolutionary Campesino Movement Murdered

Protest in Tuxtla Gutierrez (@Chiapas Paralelo)

Fifteen days after the human rights defender Sinar Corzo Esquinca was murdered in the municipality of Arriaga, Noe Jimenez Pablo, member of the Ayala Plan Coordinating Independent Revolutionary Campesino Movement (MOCRI-CNPA-MC in its Spanish acronym) and Jose Santiago Gomez Alvarez, of the Movement for Welfare, Peace and the Common Good of Amatan, were found dead and with signs of torture in a garbage dump near the municipality of Amatan. These events occurred after the denunciation of the disappearance of 50 members of the Movement for Welfare, Peace and the Common Good of Amatan on January 17th, after an armed commando broke up the sit-in maintained by the organisation since last November, against the caciques Wilbert and Manuel de Jesus Carpio Mayorga (the latter currently mayor for MORENA). The other 48 people have already appeared alive.

On January 19th, the Movement for Welfare, Peace and Common Good of Amatan held a protest in Amatan. The following day, MOCRI-CNPA-MN marched with the coffins of the two murdered individuals in Tuxtla Gutierrez accompanied by social organizations, displaced families from Chiapas, human rights defenders and students of the Rural Normal “Mactumatzá” School to demand justice requesting that the Federal authorities investigate the case.

Within the framework of this protest, Jesus Gutierrez Valencia, spokesman for the MOCRI-CNPA, denounced that this crime occurred despite the fact that 31 people from that municipality were already being monitored by the Mechanism for the Protection of Journalists and Human Rights Defenders of the Secretariat of Government (SEGOB in its Spanish acronym), including Noe Jimenez Pablo. “We came here to Tuxtla, to march with their bodies and show them here in front of the doors of the Palace of Government, what they denied so much, the existence of paramilitary groups and the dead that they do not want to see or that nobody sees what happens daily in Chiapas,” Gutierrez said. He denounced that “at all times the state government denied the facts and was negligent in its investigative role, since it always protected the mayor and his armed civilian groups.”

The lawyer Leonel Rivero, legal advisor of the CNPA-MN, reported that the National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH in its Spanish acronym) and the Attorney General’s Office already took on the case, and that “it cannot be investigated by Jorge Luis Llaven Abarca, Attorney General of the State, because in June 2001 he himself, as public prosecutor, arrested, tortured and kept Jimenez Pablo himself aprisoner, which earned him a recommendation from the CNDH.”

The lawyer also reported that there are currently threats from the same group aggressors against defenders of the Antonio Esteban Human Rights Center and against the parish priest of the municipality of Amatan, Jose Dominguez Dominguez, who has been an intermediary for the reconciliation of the people of Amatan and has already suffered attacks on two occasions.

Francisco Jimenez Pablo, Noe’s brother, blamed Rutilio Escandon Cadenas, governor of the state, and the Secretary General of Government, Ismael Brito Mazariegos, “because to date they have not had the will to resolve social conflicts, and despite being shown evidence of the operation of armed civilian groups, protected by state and municipal police, they continue operating with impunity and killing people at ant time of the day.”

Several social and civil organizations have condemned these murders. The Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Center for Human Rights recalled that “Amatan is a strategic step for transferring drugs and weapons through its border with Tabasco, it is a corridor formed by the municipalities of Bochil, Simojovel, Pueblo Nuevo and Huitiupan, where the armed groups are linked to local caciques, who in turn are linked or protected by the municipal authorities and police, for the economic and political control of the region. The negligence that the government of Rutilio Escandon Cadenas maintains with caciques, as well as the unpunished activity of armed groups in several zones, has generated an outbreak of violence in different municipalities of Chiapas, generating fear in the population in general and high risk to the work that we exercise as journalists, communicators, social leaders and human rights defenders.”

For more information in Spanish:

Quince días después del homicidio de Sinar Corzo, otro activista es asesinado en Amatán, Chiapas (Sin Embargo, 19 de enero de 2019)

Asesinan al líder de la Coordinadora Plan de Ayala en Chiapas (La Jornada, 19 de enero de 2019)

Hallan ejecutado con huellas de tortura a líder de resistencia civil de Amatán (Proceso, 19 de enero de 2019)

Campesinos y estudiantes exigen justicia por asesinato de dos líderes sociales asesinados en Amatán (Proceso, 20 de enero de 2019)

Marcha fúnebre exige justicia para líderes campesinos y el pueblo de Amatán (Chiapas, 20 de enero de 2019)

Condenamos el asesinato de Noé Jiménez Pablo (CDH Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, 19 de enero de 2019)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Chiapas: el Movimiento por el Bien Común, la Paz y Justicia de Amatán denuncia nueva agresión (18 de enero de 2019)

Chiapas: Grupo armado en Amatán intimida al párroco (17 de diciembre de 2018)

Guerrero/National: Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in Ayotzinapa Case Set Up. Federal Judge Orders Investigation into Possible Responsibility of Attorney General Employees for Irregularities

(@Excelsior)

On January 15th, the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice was set up in the Ayotzinapa case in order to “know the truth and impart justice, to establish responsibilities and enforce the law” given the forced disappearance of 43 students from the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa in Iguala, Guerrero in September 2014, the secretary of the Interior Olga Sanchez Cordero said.

The Commission will be headed by the Undersecretary of Human Rights of the Interior, Alejandro Encinas, and will be made up of representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (which will maintain contact with international human rights organizations) and the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (to assign the necessary resources). Also participating will be five fathers and mothers of the disappeared students as well as representatives of the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center, the Human Rights Center Montaña, Tlachinollan, Services and Consultancy for Peace, and Fundar Analysis and Research Center. Their first meeting will be January 23rd.

The first thing the Commission will do is approve its guidelines and establish contacts with local authorities and multilateral human rights organizations (the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner in Mexico); as well as defining the incentives or rewards for those who can provide information that helps in the clarification of what happened. They will also create a program of assistance and psychosocial accompaniment for the victims.

It should be recalled that on December 4, 2018, in one of his first acts of government, AMLO issued a presidential decree for the creation of this Commission, ordering that all instances of the federal Executive Power collaborate in any situation that was requested.

Santiago Aguirre, deputy director of the Human Rights Center Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez clarified that the creation of this Commission represents a process that is different from the creation of a specialized prosecutor’s office for the case, something that a Collegiate Court of the Judiciary ordered to continue with the criminal investigation of the facts.

On another note, the federal government will investigate all officials of the past six years possibly involved in the case, “whoever it may be”, Alejandro Encinas said in an interview.

Two days before the creation of the Commission, a federal judge left a resolution issued by the General Inspector of the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) without effect (through an injunction), which considered irregularities committed by different officials of the Attorney General’s Office as only “minor offenses”, when investigating the disappearance of the students, exonerating various officials in the events. He considered that “the decision of the Chief Investigator was neither exhaustive nor congruent and warns that it omitted to pronounce on the criminal significance that the documented behaviors could have given due to their seriousness. Consequently, the General Investigation Office of the PGR must issue a new resolution to correct the failures and omissions committed”, reported the Prodh Center, Fundar, Serapaz and Tlachinollan.

For more information in Spanish:

Instalan este martes en Segob la comisión presidencial para la verdad y justicia en el caso Ayotzinapa (Animal Político, 15 de enero de 2019)

Instalan Comisión de la Verdad para el caso Ayotzinapa (Proceso, 15 de enero de 2019)

Encinas anuncia investigación contra ex funcionarios por caso Ayotzinapa (La Jornada, 15 de enero de 2019)

Instalan comisión por Ayotzinapa; padres reclaman “la verdad” (La Jornada, 15 de enero de 2019)

Ordena Poder Judicial de la Federación investigar posible responsabilidad penal de funcionarios de PGR por irregularidades en investigación del caso Ayotzinapa (OSC, 13 de enero de 2019)

Juzgado ordena nueva investigación sobre actuación irregular de funcionarios en caso Ayotzinapa (Animal Político, 13 de enero de 2018)

Padres de los 43 nombran a representantes en Comisión de la verdad (La Jornada, 13 de enero de 2019)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Guerrero/National: Decree Establishes Truth Commission for Ayotzinapa Case
(December 19th, 2018)

Guerrero/National/International: CNDH and IACHR Ayotzinapa Reports  (December 14th, 2018)

Guerrero/National: Ayotzinapa, Four Years On…  (October 1st, 2018)

Guerrero/National: Incoming Government Confirms Creation of Truth Commission for Ayotzinapa Case (Aug. 13th, 12018)

Guerrero/National: Obstruction in Formation of Truth Commission in Ayotzinapa Case Denounced (Aug. 8th, 2018)

 

Guerrero/National: Caravan 43 “Hope is Reborn”

(@El Sur)

From December 19th to 26th, fathers and mothers of the 43 students of the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa in Iguala, Guerrero, missing since September 2014, caravan 43, Hope is Reborn, within the framework of the 51st Global Action, which began in Tixtla, Guerrero, passed through Morelos, and ended at the Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico City.

They denounced that 51 months have elapsed since the forced disappearance of their relatives without any result being achieved. They asked for justice in their case, in the case of political prisoners, the thousands of disappeared in Mexico, and the constant violations of human rights in the country. Several civil and social organizations also joined these protests.

Caravan 43 “Hope is Reborn” was named in this way because of the possibility that the new government led by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) will return the disappeared. “The idea is to continue touring and informing that the former administration of former President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, tried to bury the Ayotzinapa case and impose the historical truth”, said the spokesman of the parents of the 43 missing teachers, Meliton Ortega. He warned that despite the fact that the “new government has signed a decree, we want to say that it is not enough and it is necessary to go beyond the signing of a simple document; we need them to advance each of the lines [of investigation] until we know the truth and the whereabouts of the 43.”

For more information in Spanish:

Finalizan protestas de la 51 Acción Global por los 43 en la Basílica de Guadalupe (La Jornada, 27 de diciembre de 2018)

Padres de los 43 van a la Basílica; el obispo Rangel los recibe y en una misa pide saber la verdad y justicia (El Sur, 27 de diciembre de 2018)

Llega a Iguala la caravana 43 La Esperanza Renace, en el segundo día de actividades (La Jornada Guerrero, 21 de diciembre de 2018)

Llega a Taxco la Caravana 43 La Esperanza Renace, de normalistas (La Jornada Guerrero, 21 de diciembre de 2018)

Llega a Iguala la caravana de lucha por los 43 desaparecidos; demanda castigo a Peña Nieto (El Sur, 21 de diciembre de 2018)

Padres de los 43 inician caravana La Esperanza Renace en Tixtla (Quadratin Guerrero, 19 de diciembre de 2018)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Guerrero/National: Decree Establishes Truth Commission for Ayotzinapa Case
(December 19th, 2018)

Guerrero/National/International: CNDH and IACHR Ayotzinapa Reports (December 14th, 2018)

Guerrero/National: Ayotzinapa, Four Years On… (October 1st, 2018)

Guerrero/National: Incoming Government Confirms Creation of Truth Commission for Ayotzinapa Case (Aug. 13th, 12018)

Guerrero/National: Obstruction in Formation of Truth Commission in Ayotzinapa Case Denounced (Aug. 8th, 2018)

Guerrero: Classmates of Ayotzinapa 43 Graduate (Aug. 2nd, 2018)

Guerrero/National: Federal Court Orders Creation Truth Commission to Reopen Investigation of Ayotzinapa Case (July 12th, 2018)

 

Oaxaca: Verdict of the Popular Community Trial against the Mexican State and the mining companies

On December 10th, on the International Human Rights Day as part of a political act in front of the Government Palace villages in Oaxaca-City, communities and organizations that participated in the “Popular Community Trial against the State and Mining Companies in Oaxaca” last October publicly presented the final verdict.

It should be remembered that in the Popular Community Trial participated 52 communities who presented 22 cases of affectations caused by mining in 5 of the state’s regions including – says the verdict- “irreversible affectations to the ecosystem, river contamination, fractures in the social structure and generalized insecurity in the regions, where those mining projects operate through mining companies, shock groups and state authorities”.

The verdict put forward the necessity to rescind the 322 concessions and the 41 valid mining projects within the State “as those were imposed without previous, free and informed consent by the communities and while violating our right to self-determination and autonomy to our cultural integrity, to administrate and control our territories and to maintain the collective property of our lands and communal natural goods”.

Equally, it demanded the immediate suspension of the issue of quarrying rights “until a new legal framework has been elaborated that fully and effectively respects the indigenous people’s rights as they were established in international treaties and the Constitution, until the repeal of the current mining law and others that protect the relations with that industry”. Likewise, it urged the authorities to pass laws and public policies which protect the indigenous people’s rights, which recognize them as subjects to public rights and include the in effective mechanisms of integral reparations for the caused damage.

The legal judgment also put forward the necessity to protect those who defend their territories so that they can do so in “conditions of liberty and security” and it demanded that “the politics of criminalization against the social protest are stopped, that the people responsible for assassinations are punished and that the disappeared territorial activists are presented alive immediately as well as the suspension of arrest warrants issued for the same reasons, individual and collective threats”.

The political act ended proclaiming “Yes to life, no to mining!” and “Neither gold nor silver, mining kills!”.

The report about the civil trial details that until 2017 there haven been registered 42 mining projects by 38 companies from Canada, the United States, Peru, Australia and Mexico. 36 of them in stage of exploration, 2 in development, one was postponed and 2 are already in the phase of commercial exploitation.

For more information in Spanish:

“Oaxaca territorio prohibido para la minería”: exigencia de pueblos, comunidades y organizaciones frente al nuevo gobierno federal (Pronunciamiento e Informe, 10 de diciembre de 2018)

Juicio Popular Comunitario contra el Estado y las Empresas Mineras (Vídeo, 10 de diciembre de 2018)

Comunidades indígenas de Oaxaca exigen la prohibición total de la minería en el estado (Animal Político, 10 de diciembre de 2018)

Demandan pueblos que Oaxaca sea territorio libre de minería (NVI Noticias, 12 de diciembre de 2018)

“Oaxaca, territorio prohibido para la minería”: exigencia de comunidades al nuevo gobierno (Desinformémonos, 10 de diciembre de 2018)

Repudian proyectos de mineras en Oaxaca (La Jornada, 11 de diciembre de 2018)

For more information from SIPAZ :

Oaxaca: Popular Community Trial against the State and the Mining Companies Held (October 16th, 2018)

Oaxaca: Popular Community Trial against the State and the Mining Companies Held

Oaxaca: Anuncian juicio popular contra empresas mineras. (9 de agosto de 2018)