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.
Likewise, for several years the members of the San Pedro Yosotatú community of the Tlaxiaco community in the Oaxacan Mixteca have withstood a series of abuses and injustices by the local PRI bosses, led by Andrés Castro García, and financed by state and federal governmental institutions. It should be noticed that Andrés Castro García has been the intellectual author of selective murders. On example of this is that since February of 2005, five people have been killed who were struggling against injustices in the community at the time. Recently, on December 24, 2007, the ejido leader Placido Abraham López Castro was killed, followed by the murder of Joel García Castro on January 14 of this year. Both leaders have been active in the defense of this community.
It is important to note that this series of events is part of increasingly heightened repression, the extent of which is largely silenced by the major news media. In view of this situation, a meeting is called for Saturday, February 17 at 10:00 in the offices of the Citizens Defense Committee CODECI, located Calle Vicente Guerrero, num. 204, colonia José López Portillo, municipio de Santa Lucia del Camino, centro Oaxaca for the purpose of analyzing the situation and discussing pertinent actions to be carried out against this wave of repression in Oaxaca.
Attte. Organizaciones Indias por los Derechos Humanos en Oaxaca (OIDHO), Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de la Zona Norte del Istmo (UCIZONI), Colectivo Autónomo Magonista (CAMA), Centro de Apoyo Comunitario Trabajando Unidos (CACTUS), Alianza Magonista Zapatista (AMZ), Comité de Defensa Ciudadana (CODECI), Comité por la Defensa de los Derechos Indígenas de Santiago Xanica (CODEDI).
