Herman Bellinghausen
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Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, August 9, 2022, p. 9
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chis., In the midst of the marked increase in violence and the activities of criminal groups that afflict Chiapas, a worrying aspect is the threats and attacks against defenders of human rights and the territory.
In the first place, in recent days it was one year since the execution by assassins in the middle of the street in Simojovel of the leader of Las Abejas de Acteal, Simón Pedro. His murder occurred in a context of unleashed criminality in Chenalhó and Pantelhó, municipalities in Los Altos where conflicts between armed groups and their attacks on the civilian and peaceful population are recurrent.
In another case, the unusual threats and attacks on international observation brigades led the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Fray-ba) to close, for the first time in 28 years, a camp in which to protect observers. National and international.
Since November 2019, the Nuevo Poblado San Gregorio, in territory recovered in 1994 by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), has been constantly attacked by a group from the neighboring settlements of San Andrés Puerto Rico, Duraznal and Rancho Alegre, which They invaded 155 hectares of the collective territory of the autonomous municipality of Lucio Cabañas.
A little over a year ago, one of the Civil Observation Brigades (Brico) was installed there, which, so far this year, has already documented 21 attacks against the Zapatista families of Nuevo San Gregorio: Intimidation, death threats, sexual violence and torture; physical assaults, cattle theft and property destruction; water cuts, surveillance; obstruction, control and collection of free transit, as well as kidnapping of people. The territory has been surrounded with barbed wire, denying the right to a decent life, food, health and education
.
In mid-June, the aggressor group increased its actions and also uttered serious threats against Brico
. The Frayba highlights that the special rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the special rapporteur on Internally Displaced Persons, both from the UN, have already been informed, as well as the embassies in Mexico whose citizens were in the community.
The omission of the State aggravates the risks
Still, he points out that the three levels of government keep a deathly silence
. The omission
of the State to deal with this situation aggravates the risk to the life, safety and integrity of the population, as well as of the members of the Brico
.
Frayba also lists the cases of police and judicial persecution of defenders, which in the current conditions of violence and impunity in the region have deepened. The justice system in Chiapas intimidates and criminalizes defenders
as happened with five social activists from San Juan Cancuc, who oppose the militarization of their territory and the imposition of megaprojects, and with the recent request for an arrest warrant against the Catholic priest Marcelo Pérez Pérez, issued by the State Attorney General’s Office on June 21
in direct relation to their actions of walking peace and taking care of the house in the region of Los Altos
.
The environment of judicial harassment and criminalization, of which the state government is an accomplice, does nothing more than fuel the desire for a good, dignified life and to continue building paths for peace
. It is worth adding Cristóbal Santiz, defender of Aldama, where the Chenalhó paramilitaries do not stop shooting; after being incarcerated, he remains under house arrest for accusations that have not been proven.
Another case of criminalization of defenders occurred on October 15, 2020, when Tseltals from Chilón peacefully demonstrated against the construction of a National Guard barracks in their territory. During the operation, they detained community activists César and José Luis, and were victims of torture and ill-treatment.
. On October 17, César and José Luis were expressly transferred from the Ocosingo regional prison to El Amate de Cintalapa, without prior notification to the defense.”
In the aforementioned case of Cancuc, where community fighters were accused of murder, the Frayba demands a real, effective, scientific investigation that exhausts all lines of investigation to clarify the death of Antonio Aguilar Pérez
.
Likewise, that this unfortunate event is not used to criminalize defenders of whose innocence there are multiple witnesses
and that the authorities do not take advantage of this event to polarize the population
.
Taken together, the documented facts lead the Frayba to declare that There is a systematic practice whereby prosecutors fabricate versions of the facts beyond an exhaustion of possible lines of investigation, and evidence is invented in order to force their theory of each case. This bad practice usually includes the indictment of innocent people, a pattern that in turn is endorsed by the State Judiciary.
.
