Archive for the “CODEDI” CategoryThe Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Rights (CODEDI) denounces aggression against Abraham Ramírez Vázquez On Thursday June 12 around 10:00 o’clock in the morning, the political prisoner Abraham Ramírez Vázquez was taken out of his cell for an audience with prison warden Raúl Dávalos Zavala. Without allowing time for anyone to interview him, he was handcuffed and put into a patrol car and taken to the court in Santa Maria Huatulco, without his consent, to sign a legal document. TO THE INDEPENDENT SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS The brutal, systematic repression of the Mexican State against the movements for social transformation keeps on happening throughout the country, and in our state the situation is extremely serious. The dominant classes and the big transnational interests maintain a mediocre political class and institutions that aim to do away with citizens’ rights, criminalizing all social protest. The exercise of constitutional rights in Mexico and in Oaxaca is now a crime. In order to grant even more privileges to a handful of economic interests, there are no holds barred on state terrorism.
TO THE NEWS MEDIA The misgovernments of Calderon in Mexico and Ulises Ruiz in Oaxaca are bent on maintaining their mechanisms of systematic repression and permanent violations of human rights and constitutional guarantees. They’ve proved this through processes of indiscriminate aggression against the community life of different indigenous peoples in Oaxaca and other parts of the country, and the situation is getting increasingly worse. Their power strongholds breed policies of robbery and plunder, as well as violence. In them, many public functionaries who are obedient to very particular political or economic interests maintain relationships with corrupt authorities, local power bosses, or sinister individuals; consequently, corruption continues to grow inside the institutions and government structures.
In response to their imprisonment, some of the comrades held as political prisoners in the Central Penitentiary have formed the Santa María Ixcotel Political Prisoners’ Committee, with the aim of struggling for freedom inside the prisons and creating a voice of their own that represents the positions and opinions on the freedom struggle. This initiative does not seek to advance any organization or group in any way. On the contrary, it seeks an end to manipulation and efforts to discredit the freedom struggle. Last February 6, at approximately 3:30 p.m., the ministerial police of the State of Oaxaca detained Pedro Sánchez Antonio, the indigenous representative of the Chinanteca community El Pípila of the municipality of San Juan Mazatlán, Oaxaca. Compañero Pedro is a member and a delegate of the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus (UCIZONI) of Oaxaca. He was charged with the offenses of plunder and abuse of authority, supposedly committed against the political boss Carmelo Pérez, who was expelled from the region by campesinos in 2005. On February 7, at 8:00 a.m. Dora Ávila Betancourt was arrested in Matías Romero, Oaxaca, by several heavily armed men. Dora was taking her daughter to school when they detained her, saying that they had an arrest order for damage to a highway that occurred in 2006, a charge that was previously dropped for lack of proof. Dora is 48 years old and has spent 20 years working in indigenous rural communities in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. She has been a member of UCIZONI, and is now a Human Rights Adviser for Rural Women. January 14, mobilizations begin in the city of Oaxaca for the freedom of Pedro Castillo Aragón and all the political prisoners and prisoners of conscience of Oaxaca and the country
The struggle for our political prisoners will continue until we stop State terrorism. To the news media As the years go by, it’s all the more clear that the Mexican State and its repressive misgovernments, like that of Ulises Ruiz in Oaxaca, are still determined to label all those who struggle for equality and justice as criminals. The coercive, repressive mechanisms implemented by the political powers-that-be have many names and many facets. |
|
INFORMATIONAL BULLETIN:
February 19th, 2008 - Santa María Ixcotel, Oax. Political Prisoners Committee writes: In Oaxaca alone, 28 social activists and comrades are now imprisoned for political reasons. Eighteen of them are in the Santa María Ixcotel Central Penitentiary: David Venegas Reyes, Adán Mejìa Lòpez, Vìctor Hugo Martínez Toledo, Miguel Ángel García, Pedro Castillo Aragón, Gonzalo López Cortéz, Isabel Almaraz Matías, Agustín Luna Valencia, Eleuterio Hernández García, Álvaro Sebastián Ramírez, Urbano Ruiz Cruz, Cirilo Ambrosio Antonio, Abraham García Ramírez, Fortino Enríquez Hernández, Ricardo Martínez Enríquez, Justino Hernández José, Estanislao Martínez Santiago, and Mario Ambrosio Martínez. In the Pochutla Regional Prison the following three comrades are held: Abraham Ramírez Vázquez, Noel García Cruz, and Juventino García Cruz. There is one prisoner in the Villa de Etla Penitentiary––Zacarías P. García López––and one more is in the Cuicatlán Regional Prison––Flavio Sosa Villavicencio. Four comrades are in the Tehuantepéc Prison: José Luís Sánchez Gómez, Amado Castro López, Nicasio Zaragoza Quintana, and Edmundo Espinosa Guzmán, and another is in the Juvenile Facility: Jaciel Cruz Cruz.
CODECI, OIDHO, UCIZONI write:
