Nov 18th, 2006 – danielsan writes: As the official investigation into the killing of Brad Will goes on, legitimate questions are being asked but it is increasingly obvious that the state government is not acting as impartial investigator, but rather as ‘judge and jury,’ in the words of APPO spokespeople. This week, the PGJE (Procuraduría General de Justicia del Estado: roughly equivilent to the state attorney general’s office) has attempted to blame APPO and its supporters for the killing, saying that they executed him at close range after he was taken away from the scene of the first shot.
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English Translation of APPO Press Release
Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca
Press Release November 16th 2006
Regarding the Plan of Action from the Constitutive Congress of APPO:
Our Constitutive Congress defined continuing our path of struggle until the fall of the tyrant Ulises Ruiz Ortiz by resolving to continue to take the offensive in our mobilizations in our community, with the following activities:
*The Reactivation of the mobile brigades to close once again the offices of the state government
*Bringing in motor Caravans from all over the state to come to Oaxaca City
*The 20th of November we mobilize to greet these caravans and mobilize in general to declare this date (which is the anniversary of the Mexican Revolution) the BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION OF THE 21st CENTURY.
*On November 25th, a state-wide MegaMarcha starting at 10 AM from the Casa de Gobierno, with the objective to encircle completely the PFP in the Central Zócalo for an indefinite time.
*On November 30th we initiate a large state-wide, national, and international movement to demand the removal of Ulises Ruiz and to stop to taking of power of Felipe Calderón as president of the Republic.
*Within the next days we will fortify the blockade in front of the Senate and mobilize against the embassies of other countries.
*Within the next few days we will put forth our legal case against URO.
REGARDING THE KILLING OF NORTHAMERICAN JOURNALIST BRADLEY ROLAND WILL:
Today more than fifteen days after the killing of northamerican journalist Brad Will, after international and national public opinion remains clear that it was government thugs in service of URO who killed him, now the government intends to create a smokescreen, changing the facts of the case, including to the point of implicating members of APPO in his death, which we totally reject, for the following reasons:
*The character of our struggle is pacifist and at every moment we are living with the aggression of the ministerial police and the thugs of URO who create fear and terror in the streets of Oaxaca each night with the objective of frightening people out of the movement for the ouster of Ulises Ruiz, adding to the aggressions we’ve suffered even before the arrival of the PFP.
*On the 14th of June, APPO made a call to the national and international press to come to Oaxaca, to communicate to the public the true situation of our struggle for justice, and together with other organizations in defense of human rights, to act as shields for the movement and since then the presence of the national and international press has grown, breaking the silence that our own government had implemented in the case of Oaxaca’s popular movement.
*Just like other members of the national and international press, Bradley Roland Will came to Oaxaca with the same idea of breaking the silence and informing the world about what was happening in Oaxaca via the website New York City indymedia.
*With the arrival of national and international press as a diverse solidarity brigade from all over the country and the world, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz began a campaign of terror against them, in some cases accusing them of being advisors to the Oaxacan movement, and opening files on many of them over the course of time.
*Before Bradley’s death, at many points in our path of resistance local, national and international press had been threatened, assaulted, even injured by fire-arms, by hired thugs, provocateurs, in all cases because they were doing their job with honesty and objectivity.
*When URO was at his most desperate, he organized a plan for the invasion by Federal troops, to get a breath, for his earlier solicitations for intervention had gone nowhere due to differences between his group (the PRI) and that of Pres. Fox (PAN). On October 27th, as APPO`s strategy of shutting down developed, URO and his thugs organized provocations at more than fifteen points in the city. This aggression began with the shots fired at Radio Universidad and a fire in an office on the campus of the Ciudad Universidad at 10 AM, followed by shots fired at the barricade at Cinco Señores, and at 4 PM attacks on Coyotepec, and at the PGJE. In said places we saw disappearances, arrests, and killings, at the same time as the group of thugs headed by the municipal police of Santa Lucia del Camino and sent by the Municipal President began its attack on the Barricade at Calicanto and Av. Ferrocarril, in which they fired various guns at the barricade. At this place there were many members of the press, among them Bradley Roland Will, who was shot and killed. Other members of the press also were shot as well as members of the barricade.
*This killing was totally planned with the object of getting international pressure on Fox to send federal troops to Oaxaca, and it was successful, since after the death of Will the US government ordered the Mexican Government to send federal forces to violently occupy Oaxaca.
*For these reasons APPO totally rejects the perverse accusation that members of APPO were involved in the killing.
*We hold responsible Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, Helidoro Diaz Escarraga, Lino Celaya Luria, and Manuel Martines Feria as the intellectual authors of this killing, just as the head of Public Security of Santa Lucia del Camino Abel Santiago Zarate, the personnel boss of the same PRIista outfit, Manuel Aguilar, who is the cousin of the CROC director David Aguilar Robles, who is also local representative of the PRI, municipal police officer Juan Carlos Soriano Velasco, alias El Chapulín, and Pedro Carmona, ex president of the neighborhood Felipe Carrillo Puerto of Santa Lucia, as the material authors.
For all of these reasons we demand punishment for the authors as much planning as executing, the killing of Bradley Roland Will, and we state that it is not possible that the PGJE can investigate this crime, as it is acting as judge and jury in this investigation, resulting in error.
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca
APPO
Read more, view photos and listen to audio:
http://indybay.org/newsitems/2006/11/18/18330840.php
