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Mexican state responsible for Acteal massacre - and ongoing terror
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by Milt Shapiro (mexnews)
World War 4 Re****t - Nov 19, 2007
http://www.ww4re****t.com/node/4678
Mexican state "responsible" for Acteal massacre - and ongoing terror
A statement by Las Abejas, the Fray Bartolom(c) de las Casas Human
Rights Center and other civil organizations in conflicted Chiapas
state finds that the Mexican national state "is responsible for the
Acteal massacre" of Dec. 22, 1997. The statement says the terror
campaign in the highland municipality of Chenalh really began Aug.
19, 1996, with the assassination of six youths who were part of the
sup****t base of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). The
statement says "the massacre was the product of a deliberate and
directed State policy to exterminate the EZLN, its sup****t base and
any organization of civil society whose demands were uncomfortable
for the government." (La Jornada, Nov. 4)
Las Abejas, the group targeted in the massacre, is a Toztzil Maya
indigenous organization of Catholic pacifist principles, which is
sympathetic to the EZLN but not a part of its sup****t base. The
president of Las Abejas' steering committee, Diego P(c)rez Jim(c)nez,
charged that the guilty party "is the Mexican state, because it did
not intervene to stop the paramilitaries." Speaking at a Da de Todos
Santos commemoration of the victims, he added: "We will not rest
until we get justice, and all of the material and intellectual
authors are detained." Up to 100 local Tzotzils were at the ceremony
in the mountain hamlet of Acteal, despite cold, wet weather. (La
Jornada, Nov. 1)
Also attending was Miguel Chanteau, who was parish priest of Chenalh
at the time of the massacre, and was expelled to his native France
two months later. In a new interview in the central Chiapas Highlands
town of San Cristbal de las Casas, he too charged: "The Acteal
massacre was planned by the government to wipe out the Zapatista
sup****t bases... As we approach ten years since the events, I don't
see much possibility for a solution on the part of the government. It
seems their strategy is to let time pass, and it will be forgotten.
But it will not be forgotten."
Chanteau said that among the 87 Tzotzils detained by Mexican federal
authorities after the massacre, and now still held at El Amate
prison, "there are some guilty and some innocent, because it was a
round-up." (La Jornada, Nov. 7)
Low-level terror continues in Chiapas, as the state is once again
militarized in response to a supposed guerilla threat. Mexican and
international activists have established a civil observation camp at
El Relleno, Venustiano Carranza municipality, where the inhabitants
have been repeatedly harassed by army and police forces ostensibly
hunting down the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR). (Mirada Sur,
Chiapas, Oct. 29, via IMC Chiapas)
Activists protested that the state's ruling Democratic Revolution
Party (PRD) has named Rafael Cevallos Cancino coordinator of its bloc
in the state legislature. State PRD director Carlos Esquinca hailed
him as "a man with broad experience." On(c)simo Hidalgo, director of
the Chiapas Investigative Center for Communitarian Action (CIEPAC),
charged that investigations by the federal Prosecutor General had
named Cevallos as a funder of Los Chinchulines, a notorious
paramilitary group in the north of the state. Hidalgo also warned
that in the Oct. 7 elections, persons linked to the paramilitaries
had won the municipal presidencies of San Cristbal de las Casas,
Sabanilla, Zinacant!n, San Andr(c)s Larr!inzar and Chiln. (La Jornada,
Oct. 25, via Chiapas IMC)
Hidalgo accused the new municipal president (mayor) of San Cristbal
of an overt threat. President Mariano Daz?who occupied the same
office in the '90s, when he represented the "aut(c)nticos coletos," a
conservative body of the traditional town elite?said he would "impose
order" in Cerro Huitepec, a hill outside town where the EZLN have
declared a rebel ecological reserve, and the barrios of 5 de Marzo
and Molino de los Arcos, said to be zones of Zapatista sympathy.
(Meridiano90, Oct. 25)
*
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