Violent Eviction of Permanent Protest Camp Outside Miahuatlan Prison

no estamos todxs, faltan lxs presxs!

January 14th, 2007 – LIMEDDH Oaxaca writes: Yesterday, Saturday January 13th, 2007, the relatives of the men and women arrested during the events surrounding the protests in Oaxaca in the last few months called for a peaceful demonstration to start at 10am from the center of Miahuatlan to the CERESO prison. The main objective of the mobilization was to demand the immediate and unconditional release of all the political prisoners as well as the overthrow of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (PRI party). The demonstration took place without incidents.

During the meeting that relatives of the prisoners held at the end of the march, as well as all throughout it, a strong built man wearing short cropped military style hair was noticed holding a home video camera and recording events while keeping a safe 10 meters away from them while regularly talking through a mobile phone. When he realized he was being observed, he quickly moved away from the scene, jumped a wall of about a meter high and into a path that leads to a cluster of houses while some demonstrators followed and shouted at him to stop, identify himself and explain his reason for filming.

He then started to run fast and entered a house from the inside of which the owners threw him out. At this moment out of his clothes he brandished a long knife and attacked some of the people around him, though fortunately they managed to avoid being hurt. Surrounded and with no way out, he gave himself up.

He was taken to the place of the meeting and handed over to the Miahuatlan prison authorities through Reynaldo Lopez, prison officer.

Later between 16:30 and 17:00 hrs, 5 people were arrested, snatched while they traveled aboard a van on its way back to Oaxaca City. The women and children in the van where threatened with arrest if they did anything to interfere with the detention. At the moment of publishing this report, only one of the 5 people detained has been identified; 19 year old student of Mexico City’s autonomous university (UNAM) Jesus Villaseca Perez.

Later still around 17:40 hrs and while relatives were huddling together to eat, 7 white Miahuatlan police vans with about 50 police officers on board, many of them wearing balaclavas over their faces and ALL of armed with kalashnikov AK47s, violently abandoned their vehicles shouting towards the families in the protest camp, “Orale!, Orale! sons of btiches! we are going to break your spine!”. The police then proceeded to the violent eviction of the Planton spreading a sense of extreme panic. Many of the relatives could escape running while some were arrested. Faced with the extreme force of the eviction operation the families of the prisoners had to urgently leave the encampment leaving behind their belongings, identity papers and credentials, credit cards, news bulletins, mobile phones, etc.

At this moment 17 relatives; 3 men, 14 women, who managed to escape the violent repression are in hiding and terrorized by the constant police patrols around the city. These families have lost company of the CCIODH (International Civil Commission of Human Rights Observers) faced with the fear of being arrested.

Up until now, the arrests of 7 people is confirmed: Jesús Villaseca Pérez, 19 years old, student in UNAM, Miguel López Cruz, 28. Vladimir González Martínez, Rogelio García, José Poncia Neri, Arnulfo Sequel Velasquez and Alberto Vásquez.

According to the information available to us at this moment, all the prisoners were moved to the city of Oaxaca where some will be presented before the Republic’s Procaduria General and others before the Public Ministry of the State of Oaxaca.

source: http://indymedia.nl/nl/2007/01/41787.shtml

2 Comments

  1. interview (castillian)
    indyOax
    chiapas.indymedia.org

    Alba Cruz is a part of the > 25 November Juditial Comission Comittee 2 day siege of the PFP inside zocalo square action and consecuente fascist repression during the night and following days-weeks.

  2. Background info on the violent eviction
    ivan

    Already on January 4th, 2007 the relative’s protest camp (plantón) was heavily harassed. The Director and the Jefe de Custodios of the Penitentiary informed the plantón that their relatives were receiving severe threats from the other inmates on account of the plantón, and of the marches outside of the Penitentiary. Later that day, the people at plantón received a phone call telling them to remove the camp, as the lives of two inmates were in danger. They were given until 10am of the next day – otherwise the inmates would suffer the consequences. The inmate’s cells were not closed by the prison guards that night.

    The interviewee in the above comment is Alba Cruz, a lawyer belonging to the ’25th of November Liberation Committee.’ This organization coordinates the legal defense of those who have been illegally detained and disappeared in Oaxaca – its goal is their liberation.

    espora.org/limeddh
    proceso.com.mx

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