Oaxaca: Fourth Encounter of Women Activists and Human Rights Defenders in Oaxaca

Photo @: SIPAZ

On June 15TH and 16TH, the Fourth Encounter of Women Activists and Human Rights Defenders of Oaxaca took place in the capital city of the state. About 70 women from different regions of the state of Oaxaca, the Mixteca, the Sierra Norte, the Isthmus, the Cañada, the Coast, the Sierra Sur and the Central Valleys, as well as representatives of international support organizations and a representative of the European Union in Mexico were present. The meeting aimed at the design of a comprehensive feminist protection strategy promoted by the Oaxaca Consortium for the Parliamentary Dialogue and Equality (Consortium) and various organizations that are part of the Mesoamerican Women Defenders Initiative (IM-Defensoras in Spanish), under the premise of strengthening the defense of the human rights of the various feminist, civil and social movements as well as strengthening alliances between the different struggles of women. They are currently involved in a variety of struggles, ranging from the defense of Earth and Territory, water, migrants, rejection of “death” mega-projects of and high electricity charges to requests for freedom for political prisoners and those unjustly imprisoned.

According to IM-Defensoras, the context in the state of Oaxaca is “adverse and dangerous for the defense of human rights where attacks have risen alarmingly, where impunity and the acquiescence of the state are a pattern.” In 2012, for example, the Consortium registered a total of 48 attacks against defenders in Oaxaca, while in 2016, that number rose to 320. The attacks are of different types: assaults, harassment, threats, slander, defamation and feminicides.

 For more information in Spanish :

Se consolidan procesos de articulación de mujeres defensoras en Oaxaca (Educa, 16 de junio de 2017)

Inicia el 4º Encuentro Estatal de Mujeres Activistas y Defensoras de Derechos Humanos de Oaxaca (Iniciativa Mesoamericana de mujeres defensoras de derechos humanos, 16 de junio de 2017)

 

National: “The Offensive of Those Above against the Movement from Below”, CNI Communiqué Reports Intensification of Repression

On June 12th, the National Indigenous Congress (CNI in its Spanish acronym) published a new communiqué titled “The Offensive of Those Above against the Movement from Below” “to repudiate the repressive escalation against compañeros from our peoples where they have been nominating councilors for integration of the Indigenous Council of Government for Mexico, which represents for us an attack against the CNI and our proposal that we have launched throughout the nation.”

It denounced threats, attacks, arrests and a murder in four communities in Chiapas, a community in Queretaro, one in Morelos, one in the State of Mexico, one in Michoacan, one in Campeche, and the situation of Mayan indigenous people in Guatemala who are displaced in Campeche.

The CNI identified these events as part of “the intensification of the war against our peoples, the storm that flashes across the sky and now seeks to end hope for all Mexicans represented by the Indigenous Council of Government and our spokeswoman, of the use of attack groups and paramilitaries to strike at the struggle of the peoples that make up the CNI, of the criminalization and persecution of those who fight for a just world, from below and to the left.”

 For more information in Spanish:

La ofensiva de arriba, ante el movimiento de abajo (CNI, 12 de junio de 2017)

“Escalada represiva” contra pueblos del Congreso Nacional Indígena (Contralínea, 12 de junio de 2017)

 For more information from SIPAZ:

Chiapas : Aumenta tensión en Tila (9 de junio de 2017)

Chiapas : Allanamiento y robo de información a integrante de Semilla Digna, parte del CNI (8 de junio de 2017)

Chiapas: Asesinan a Rodrigo Guadalupe Huet Gómez(6 de junio de 2017)

Nacional / Chiapas : El CNI conforma su Concejo Indígena de Gobierno y elige a su vocera (31 de mayo de 2017)

Chiapas: “The Walls of Capital, the Cracks of the Left” Critical Reflection Seminar Ends

Between April 12th and 15th, the Critical Reflection Seminar “The Walls of Capital, the Cracks of the Left” was held at Cideci-Unitierra in San Cristobal de Las Casas. It included the participation of commanders of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and of several intellectuals of the country.

Participations focused mainly on the neoliberal capitalist system today and what is to come, the resistances and possibilities that the proposal to form an Indigenous Council of Government and to appoint an indigenous candidate to the presidential elections of 2018 opens, given that with the current situation, “We have no choice but to make the earth shake its centers”, said Gilberto Lopez y Rivas.

From the first day, Subcomandante Insurgente Moises, spokesperson for the EZLN, explained why the capitalist world resembles a walled estate reminiscent of slavery on the estate, its boss-caporal-butler-foremen command structure, where government structure subordinate to the command of capital, its “employer.”

Later, he stressed that, “the migrants did not leave because they wanted to, but because they could no longer be on their farm, better known as a country.” He announced that after “emptying their pockets and not finding euros, the Zapatista communities agreed to work collectively to raise a total of 3,915.5 kg. of clean and roasted coffee to send to the migrant brothers, so that they are the ones who organize themselves there and see how to turn the coffee into resistance and rebellion.” He clarified: “We below need to help each other to demonstrate that we do not need those who give conditioned support,” referring to the government and political parties.

For his part, Subcomandante Galeano made a call to fight collectively because “the storm is coming and what is seen now is not even remotely the peak”, because “the worst is yet to come and individuals, bright and capable as they might be of feeling will not be able to survive survive if it is not with others, others.” He added that “Zapatismo as libertarian thinking does not recognize the rivers Bravo and Suchiate as limits of its aspiration of freedom”, because “the fight against capital is global.”

Referring to the upcoming electoral context, he reiterated that “among the options our position has been and is clear: There is no good foreman but we understand that someone, most of the time as a comfort therapy, makes a differentiation between the bad and the worse. (…) We do not want to choose between a cruel and kindly boss, simply and plainly do not want bosses.”

He added: “I would recommend that you take advantage of what the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) will do from May this year. We truly hope that the CNI will fulfill its own mandate and will not fall into the search of votes and posts, but that it will take a brother’s ear for whoever is below in pain and loneliness, to relieve him with the call to the organization.” He expressed that “Come closer as a sister, brother, brothers, because when the time comes when no one knows where to go, those who are despised and humiliated today will know where the path and the look, they will know the how and when. They will know the answer to the most urgent and important question in those moments: What next?”

At the end of the event, Subcomandante Insurgente Moises concluded “They listened to our words. It is now up to you to discern which ones serve you to organize, work and fight where you live. (…) We have only to organize and go for everything (…) People below: organize, fight and work in resistance and rebellion.”

For more information in Spanish:

Participación de la Comisión Sexta del EZLN en el Seminario de reflexión crítica “LOS MUROS DEL CAPITAL, LAS GRIETAS DE LA IZQUIERDA” (Participación del 12 al 15 de abril, Enlace zapatista)

Día 1: Los muros del capital, las grietas de la izquierda (12 de abril de 2017)

Día 2: Los muros del capital, las grietas de la izquierda(Radio zapatista, 13 de abril de 2017)

Día 3: Los muros del capital, las grietas de la izquierda (Radio zapatista, 14 de abril de 2017)

Día 4: Los muros del capital, las grietas de la izquierda (Radio zapatista, 15 de abril de 2017)

El enemigo capitalista no va dejar que el pueblo mande, por eso hay que organizarnos: EZLN (Radio Formula, 14 de abril de 2017)

“Lo peor está por venir”, advierte el subcomandante Galeano (La Jornada, 15 de abril de 2017)

Lo que viene será peor: subcomandante Galeano (Proceso, 16 de abril de 2017)

Refrenda el EZLN que la lucha es contra el capitalismo (Contralínea, 17 de abril de 2017)

La postulación de la candidata indígena es un llamado a la organización, más que un asunto electoral (Desinformémonos, 17 de abril de 2017)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Chiapas: El EZLN anuncia nuevas convocatorias e invitaciones para 2017 (24 de febrero de 2017)

Chiapas / Nacional : CNI y EZLN realizarán consulta para nombrar a una candidata indígena hacia las elecciones presidenciales de 2018 (15 de octubre de 2016)

Oaxaca/National: Fresh Death Threats against Father Solalinde

Taken from Youtube

Since March 27, a 20-second video of 20 has begun circulating on YouTube in which a distorted voice threatens Father Alejandro Solalinde Guerra, defender of the rights of the migrants and proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize, with death: “Father Solalinde, don’t talk bullshit, you have trafficked with the bodies of many migrant minors, and we ask you to shut your mouth or we will take the lives that you know scoundrel, greetings.”

A sheet of paper appears as background image on which is written “Father Solalinde”, and surrounded by seven bullets and a cross. It should be noted that the Twitter account and the image used to threaten Solalinde are the same as those used to attack journalist Andrea Noel last March 15.

These new threats could be due to statements made by the priest about organized crime during his tour of Veracruz to accompany the governor Miguel Angel Yunes Linares at a meeting with mothers of disappeared persons and in the context of which many denunciations were made against the current administration and the Attorney General’s Office.

Faced with these new threats, Father Solalinde said in an interview with Imagen del Golfo: “A risk review has just been made, but I sincerely tell you: what can my security matter when the whole country is as it is?” In his Twitter account, he ratified “they will not silence me, I will make the voices of those who have less, of those forgotten be heard more strongly!”

For more information in Spanish:

Con VIDEO amenazan de muerte al padre Solalinde, defensor de migrantes y activista social (Sin Embargo, 27 de marzo de 2017)

Amenazan de muerte al sacerdote Alejandro Solalinde (SDP Noticias, 27 de marzo de 2017)

Amenazas de muerte en mi contra no paran, pero no seré omiso ante el dolor: Solalinde (Imagen del Golfo, 25 de marzo de 2017)

Iglesia calló sobre fosas por favores que recibió de Herrera y Duarte: Solalinde (La Silla Rota, 22 de marzo de 2017)

 For more information from SIPAZ:

Nacional/Internacional: Nominan al padre Solalinde para Premio Nobel de la Paz 2017 (23 de marzo de 2017)

Nacional/Oaxaca: el padre Solalinde declara que el flujo migratorio no disminuirá a pesar de las nuevas medidas federales (1ero de agosto de 2014)

Oaxaca: Padre Solalinde recibe Premio Nacional de Derechos Humanos por su trabajo a favor de migrantes (11 de diciembre de 2012)

National/International: Father Solalinde Nominated for 2017 Nobel Peace Prize

Photo: @Codigo San Luis

On March 10, the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM in its Spanish acronym) confirmed that the founder of the “Hermanos en el Camino” shelter in the City of Ixtepec, Oaxaca, the Catholic priest and migrant advocate Alejandro Solalinde Guerra, was accepted by the Norwegian Committee as candidate for the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

“The proposal was received with great hope by the shelter, not so much for the prize, but for the interest in putting the migration of Latin America, the violations of the rights of Central American migrants and the new North American policy on migration matters to international debate”, said Alberto Donis, one of the shelter’s coordinators.

According to the UAEM rector, Jorge Olvera Garcia, “since last year we set ourselves the task of realizing the whole context surrounding the activity of Father Alejandro Solalinde and decided to propose it with the committee of the Nobel Prize; we want and desire him to be recognized in all the activity that he carries out for the protection of human rights, human dignity of migrants from Central America to the United States.”

In his Twitter account, the migrant defender wrote: “A great commitment that I assume with all humility always in favor of the victims”.

For more information in Spanish:

Comité Noruego admite postulación de Solalinde para Premio Nobel de la Paz 2017 (Proceso, a 10 de marzo de 2017)

Comité Noruego acepta postulación del padre Solalinde para el Premio Nobel de la Paz (Sin Embargo, a 10 de marzo de 2017)

 For more information from SIPAZ:

Nacional/Oaxaca: el padre Solalinde declara que el flujo migratorio no disminuirá a pesar de las nuevas medidas federales (1ero de agosto de 2014)

Oaxaca: Padre Solalinde recibe Premio Nacional de Derechos Humanos por su trabajo a favor de migrantes (11 de diciembre de 2012)

 

Chiapas: National Day: “The Victims of State Terrorism are of the People, We will not Stop until We Find Them!”

FNLS Press Conference (Photo: @Sipaz)

 On March 6, the National Front for Struggle for Socialism (FNLS) began its National Day of Struggle in Chiapas.

The first event was a press conference along with the ‘Committee of Relatives of Missing until Found Persons’. The conference remembered the anniversaries of the forced disappearance of Fidencio Gomez Santiz, who disappeared in Ocosingo on March 5, 2016, as well as Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sanchez, arrested and disappeared in May 2007 in Oaxaca.

During the conference, they also reported on the latest developments against members of the FNLS: “With deep regret we inform you that on Tuesday, February 28, our compañero Humberto Morales Santiz, who was only 13 years old and who was in the first grade of a telesecundaria in the town of Cuxul-ja was cruelly and cowardly murdered by the paramilitaries known as “Los Petules”, in coordination with police and other state bodies who are invading the ejidal lands of the compañeros in El Carrizal.”

At the end of the conference, the FNLS and the ‘Committee of Relatives of Missing until Found Persons’ demanded that the state government of Chiapas and the federal government investigate and punish those responsible for the extrajudicial execution of Humberto Morales Santis and the presentation of compañeros Fidencio Gomez Santiz, Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sanchez and Edmundo Reyes Amaya.

On March 7, the FNLS organized the “Victims of State Terrorism in Mexico” forum in the Aula Magna of the Campus III UNACH Law School. Speakers shared their experiences of the impact of forced disappearances on the victims’ families and on the relationship between forced disappearances and migration.

The following day, the FNLS participated in the Women’s March in the context of International Women’s Day in San Cristobal de Las Casas: “In the Context of the National Day: The Victims of State Terrorism are of the People, We will not Stop until We Find Them! The National Front for Struggle for Socialism (FNLS) commemorates this March 8: International Day of Proletarian Women, as a day of struggle and protest against the current conditions of misery, economic exploitation and political oppression, to which is added the grim reality that leaves the wave of institutional violence emanating from the policy of state terrorism.”

On the same afternoon, the FNLS occupied the offices of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH in its Spanish acronym) in San Cristobal de Las Casas to demand justice and a response to the aforementioned lawsuits and to urge the CNDH to speak out about the constant violations of human rights and police-military harassment against the communities organized in the FNLS.

They demanded that they “resume these cases” denouncing that  “although it [theCNDH] has information, it is not doing its job as it should be.”

 For more information in Spanish:

Miembros del FNLS toman oficinas de la CNDH en San Cristóbal de las Casas (Proceso, 8 de Marzo de 2017)

‘Toman’ oficinas de CNDH en Chiapas (La Jordana, 8 de Marzo de 2017)

DÍA INTERNACIONAL DE LA MUJER PROLETARIA (FNLS, 9 de Marzo de 2017)

Video. El FNLS y el Comité Hasta Encontrarlos toman oficinas de la CNDH para exigir investigue desapariciones (FNLS, 9 de Marzo de 2017)

Acción Urgente – Ejecución Extrajudicial del niño Humberto Morales Sántiz de 13 años de edad, integrante del Frente Nacional de Lucha por el Socialismo en Chiapas. (Comité Cerezo, 4 de Marzo de 2017)

 For more information from SIPAZ:

Chiapas: “Jornada nacional contra el terrorismo del estado en Chiapas” del FNLS (2 de Mayo de 2016)

Nacional/Oaxaca/Chiapas: Gira nacional: desaparición forzada en México (6 de Marzo de 2015)

Nacional: Comisión Civil de Seguimiento y Búsqueda de dos miembros del Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR) desaparecidos desde 2007 denuncia falta de avances (19 de Septiembre de 2014)

National/International: “Torture and Mistreatment Continue to Be Widespread in Mexico”, Juan E. Mendez

Amnesty International campaign against torture in Mexico

On 24 February, the current UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, presented the follow-up report on the mission carried out by his predecessor Juan E. Mendez in Mexico on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The report pointed out that “torture continues to be widespread on the part of security forces and investigators”; that suffocation, sexual violence, electric shocks, death threats, beatings, and psychological torture are “commonly used for obtaining information, confessions or as a method of punishment. To this is added a context of serious impunity, where the lack of investigation into these facts is the rule.”

In his assessment of the situation, the rapporteur stated that “organized crime is a challenge for the authorities and the population.” He commented that since 2006 and under the so-called “war against drug trafficking”, “militarization of public security remains as strategy.” He expressed concern about the “extremely vulnerability” of migrants by stating that “the detention of migrants by state agents is often violent and includes insults, threats and humiliations.”

 The Rapporteur regretted to conclude in his report that since his visit two years ago the situation “has not changed”, that “torture and mistreatment are still widespread in Mexico.” He noted that the “elimination of this practice is a fundamental challenge and that is why it is important to enact the General Law on Torture, with provisions that comply with the highest international standards […] so that torture, enforced disappearances, the persecution of victims and defenders of human rights and impunity cease to be part of everyday life. “ He further requested from Mexico that there be no “exceptions to the rule of exclusion of evidence obtained through torture” in that law.

For more information in Spanish:

Pide ONU a Peña mayores esfuerzos para combatir tortura, desapariciones e impunidad ( Proceso, 3 de marzo de 2017)

Cuatro veces más quejas por tortura en último año: CNDH ( La Jornada, 28 de febrero de 2017)

Gobernación le pegó por 4 años al Papa, ONU, CIDH, HRW, AI… y dejó a México solo frente a Trump ( Sin Embargo, 27 de febrero de 2017)

La tortura aún es una práctica generalizada por parte de las autoridades en México: Relator de la ONU( Sin Embargo, 27 de febrero de 2017)

Preocupa a ONU política migratoria aplicada en México (El universal , 26 de febrero de 2017)

Violaciones, asfixia y descargas: las prácticas de tortura de las fuerzas policiales en México (Animal Político, 2 de marzo de 2017)

La tortura aún es generalizada en México: relator de la ONU ( Nwnoticias , 2 de marzo de 2017)

Informe del Relator Especial sobre la tortura y otros tratos o penas crueles, inhumanos o degradantes, Juan E. Méndez (Oficina del Alto Comisionado de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas, 29 de diciembre de 2014)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Nacional: Amnistía Internacional presenta su informe anual sobre la situación de derechos humanos en el mundo. México, “en una de las peores crisis de derechos humanos y justicia” (3 de marzo de 2017)

Nacional/Internacional: relator especial de Naciones Unidas sobre Tortura presenta informe sobre México en Ginebra, Suiza (10 de marzo de 2015)

Nacional: Organizaciones sociales se pronuncian sobre ley de tortura (31 de mayo de 2016)