El Enemigo Común

by carolina

Abraham Ramírez Vásquez, Juventino García Cruz and Noel García Cruz, the first political prisoners of the Ulises Ruiz regime in Oaxaca, are from the Zapotec town of Santiago Xanica. The three members of the Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Rights (CODEDI) and the Popular Anti-neoliberal Oaxacan Magonista Coordinating Body (COMPA) were arrested on January 15, 2005, after hundreds of preventive and judicial police opened a crossfire on a group of 80 men, women, children and old people who were unloading bricks from a truck as part of a community work project. Abraham, Noel and Juventino were seriously wounded by gunshots. The people responded to the attack with sticks and stones, but more police came in, dragged the three wounded people out of the clinic, and took them to a house to be tortured by the police. After a few days, they were taken to the Ixcotel prison and then to the prison at Pochutla. Despite their serious wounds, they received no medical treatment until 36 hours after being admitted to the Pochutla hospital.

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TO THE NEWS MEDIA
TO INDEPENDENT HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS
TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC

Oaxaca is experiencing one of the most serious social, political, and economic crises of all times. As opposition grows in different regions of our state to the authoritarian plans of the current set of misrulers; as people suffer more intense marginalization and a lack of attention to the most urgent demands of our poorest communities, neighborhoods and barrios; as the stark problems of public health, education, and lack of security get worse––we find that Oaxaca is totally out of control, a situation that the misgovernment tries to deny by generating increasingly deplorable conditions of repression and violence.

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The Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Rights (CODEDI) of Santiago Xanica makes the following denunciation:

To the news media
To the independent organizations
To the anarchist collectives
To the people

Once again the intimidation of marginalized peoples is on the rise in our state. They send us military troops to disarm the citizens when the reality is that entire families don’t have a thing to eat. Today, many children didn’t eat breakfast before they went to school, but the federal government sends more battalions to do the job of intimidating Mexican people.

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TO THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS AND LABOR UNIONS
TO THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL INDEPENDENT ORGANIZATIONS
TO THE NEWS MEDIA
TO THE PEOPLE IN GENERAL

From San Pedro Pochutla prison in Oaxaca, the university of crime and violence, we raise our voices, our feelings, our rebellious spirit, our anger and courage.

Today, January 15, 2009, marks the fourth year we’ve been held captive by tyrants protected by laws that give them the right to kidnap, kill, and disappear our brothers and sisters who go against their projects. We say to the neoliberal puppets headed by the killer Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO) and to his scroungy dogs turned loose on a crime spree to fill the prisons with innocent people, that our people’s only crime is demanding their rights. As these killers well know, our rebellion comes from the heart and we’ll never just sit back and watch this injustice go on. All their chains and cells and walls aren’t strong enough to keep our voice from being heard.

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TO THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS

We, the undersigned, Abraham Ramírez Vásquez, Noel and Juventino García Cruz, members of the Committee for Defense of Indigenous Rights (CODEDI) and the Popular Anti-neoliberal Oaxacan Coordinating Group (COMPA), denounce the following:

Ever since our arrest in 2005 for the offenses of aggravated homicide and kidnapping, which we never committed and will always insist were fabricated by the tyrant Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, the current governor responsible for the crimes against humanity against our comrades in the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, we have been subjected to violations of our basic human rights that should be respected.

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