December 17th, 2006 – from FSRN: The landscape of downtown Oaxaca City changed considerably over the weekend when in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday, thousands of Federal Preventative Police discreetly pulled out of the public plazas and parks. The militarized police force had maintained a heavy presence in downtown since they took the city center on October 29th. Military personnel carriers, water tanks and razor wire are now gone and security operations have been handed over to state and municipal police. A contingent of federal troops have stayed behind in the city in the event of a renewed uprising.
Meanwhile, those clamoring for the release of the hundreds of political prisoners swept up since a brutal crackdown in November got some good news this weekend; 43 of the 141 detainees held at the federal penitentiary in the distant State of Nayarit have been released. Shannon Young reports from Oaxaca City.
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APPO spokespeople detained and beaten in Oacaxa
Three APPO spokespeople were detained, beaten, tortured and released in Oaxaca City. Plain clothes gunmen detained, beat, and tortured three members of the Oaxaca People’s Popular Assembly (APPO)–also members of the Popular Revolutionary Front (FPR)– Florentino Martinez, Pedro Garcia, and Otalo Padilla.
After about an hour of beatings and death threats, the gunmen, who identified themselves as being part of the “death squad,” referring to the state police convoys that wounded and killed protesters in August, released the three men, throwing them out of the truck. They robbed a laptop computer and a USB memory stick with APPO and FPR documents, as well as other possessions. Within an hour the men held a press conference at the university describing and denouncing the events.
source and photos:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/12/358564.html
and now for something completely different
http://amcop.blogspot.com/2006/12/and-now-for-something-completely.html
Oaxaca Resiste
http://disillusionedkid.blogspot.com/2006/11/oaxaca-is-one-of-those-places-which.html