Subject: Urgent Appeal From The FAC-MLN In Mexico
From: Arm The Spirit <ats@locust.cic.net>
Date: 8 Jan 1997 23:44:54 GMT
Message-ID: <5b1bhm$1gng@news.missouri.edu>
Organization: ?
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive

Urgent Call From The Frente Amplio Para La Construccion Para La
Liberacion Nacional (FAC-MLN)

Dear Comrades,
     Our fraternal greetings and best wishes for the year 1997!
     In the face of increasingly widespread and brutal
repression, comrades of the National Coordination of the FAC-MLN
have asked us to send you the following text of the
signature-petition that will be published in a national newspaper
in Mexico.
     We ask you, if you agree to sign in, to let us know the
soonest time possible and to gather signatures from other
organizations and/or persons. (Send to address at the end.)

To the People of Mexico and Their Organizations:

     We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, wish to
express our great concern over the daily and repeated human
rights violations committed by the Mexican government.
     The Mexican government, in face of the just demands for
democracy, liberty, justice and life with dignity, demands being
raised by increasingly broader sections of the Mexican people,
has responded through incarceration, killings, torture and
massive repression.
     The political constitution of the United States of Mexico
guarantees all Mexicans the following rights: to express their
opinions, to assemble, to organize and to publicly demonstrate.
But when these rights are put into practice, the government,
which should be the first to defend them, responds by using
repression.
     Most worrying for us is the closed and repressive attitude
of the federal government towards the different organizations
composing the Broad Front for the Building of the Movement for
National Liberation (FAC-MLN - Frente Amplio por la Construccion
del Movimiento para la Liberacion Nacional), proof of which is
that more than 200 members of the Front are now in prison. To
justify this repression, the Mexican government resorts to the
old tactic, used by all repressive governments in Latin America,
of attempting to link the FAC-MLN to armed revolutionary
organizations. This, despite the fact the our Front works openly
and within the bounds of the law.
     By this argument, hundreds are detained and imprisoned, wide
areas of the country are militarized, thousands of peasants and
indigenous people are persecuted, with the federal army behaving
like an occupation army on Mexican territories.
     In face of all these, we say to the the people of Mexico:
you are not alone, your struggle is just, sooner than later it
will be crowned with success, and we will continue to closely
follow up the developments in Mexico.

We demand from the Mexican government:

- A solution to the just demands of the people and their
organizations.

- A stop to repression.

- Demilitarization of the country.

- Trial and punishment of those guilty of torture and
detention-disappearances.

- Release of all political prisoners.

- Surfacing alive of all detainees-disappeared.

- Respect for the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of the
civilian population and prisoners of war.

Name of person      Address or organization Signature
___________________ _______________________ _____________

For Immediate Action:

To All Human Rights Organizations
To the People of the World

     On September 1, 1996, when Dr. Ernesto Zedillo Ponce
underscored - in his second government report declaring the use
of "the full force of the state to combat terrorism" - that the
government was not prepared to correct the course of the
neoliberal economic policy which has generated an economic
crisis, the weight of this crisis has been made to bear mainly on
the marginalized communities, the working class and the different
sectors of the people.
     This situation has led us to demand the solution to our just
demands. In all corners of the country, different sectors have
stood up in struggle: workers, indigenous people, students,
settlers, etc.
     Far from finding solutions, however, the various movements
have been met with widespread repression.
     The cruelty with which the Mexican state reacted was shown
by the events on December 1, 2 and 3 of this year in the towns of
the Loxicha region of Oaxaca state.
     Police-military operations were carried out on December 1 in
the communities of Loma Bonita, Llano Maguey, Santa Cruz de las
Flores, Tierra Blanca and Magdalena, all within the municipality
of San Agustin Loxicha. These resulted in the detention of 22
indigenous people, all of them savagely tortured upon arrest. As
a result of this state brutality, Comrade Sebastian Antonio was
killed while under torture, while the other 21 detainees up to
now have not been surfaced and are still certainly being
tortured.
     On the second day, in another operation in the place known
as Manzanal, seven indigenous people were detained and
disappeared: Moises Antonio Valencia, Isaias Antonio Ramirez,
Rogelio Hernandez Martinez, Alejandro Luna Santiago, Samuel
Valencia Valencia, Elpidio Valencia Valencia and Humberto Antonio
Martinez.
     Another very serious development is the declaration of
Justice Procurator General that a military training camp of the
Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR - Ejercito Popular
Revolucionario) has been found in Llano Maguey, where the
following were discovered: lists of possible EPR members,
documents of political organizations, propaganda materials,
newspapers, FAC-MLN documents, the Aguas Blancas manifesto,
documents of the Organization of the Indigenous People of
Zapoteco, as well as boots, backpacks, bullet-proof vests, PRI
and voters credentials, photos of indigenous people undergoing
military training, among others.
     We wish to point out and make clear our vigorous rejection
of such irresponsible declarations made by the procurator since
they are a part of a vicious lie orchestrated and perpetrated by
the state government in coordination with the federal government
in order to justify the repression and break up our democratic
organizations by trying to link them to the armed organizations,
even as we have repeatedly stated that our struggle is within the
bounds of the constitution.
     In this framework, on December 3 the state police force
raided and occupied the office of the Coordination of Democratic
and People's Organizations (CODPO - Coordinadora de
Organizaciones Democraticas y Populares), during which they acted
arbitrarily and violently in detaining 15 persons, among them
some few months-old children and women relatives of the prisoners
of the Loxicha region, who had been driven out of their
communities. Likewise detained were Professor Enrique Rueda
Pacheco, Halil Mendoza Salazar and Sandra Alcala, Assistant to
the Secretary for Political Orientation of Section 22 of the
Teachers Union, thus making a total of 44 detainees in these
three operations and 99 detainees in all the police-military
operations in the Loxicha region, 30 of them having been
disappeared.

We demand: 

- The immediate withdrawal of the police forces keeping a state
of siege in the communities of Loxicha region and in the
residence of Professor Mendoza Gonzales, former general secretary
of Section 22 of the Teachers Union; the restitution of our
offices and everything taken from them; and the payment of damage
compensation.

- The immediate resignation of the Governor and the Justice
General of Oaxaca state who are directly responsible for the
killing and torture of Adrian Sebastian Antonio, for the lives of
the 30 detainees-disappeared, and for all the atrocities and
harassments to which the Zapoteca communities of Loxicha have
been subjected. We also demand the trial and punishment of these
persons.

We call on all the people of the world to express themselves
vigorously and demand the Mexican government to:

1. Stop repression in the countryside and cities.

2. Free all political prisoners in Oaxaca and throughout the
country.

3. Surface alive all the disappeared in the Loxicha region and
throughout the country.

4. Try and punish those responsible for the dirty war.

5. Cause the resignation of Oaxaca Governor Diodoro Carrasco
Altamirano and Justice Procurator General Roberto Pedro Martinez
Ortiz.

Fraternally,

People's Unity Against Repression in the Loxicha Region (Union de
los Pueblos Contra la Represion de la Region de los Loxicha)

Coordination of Democratic and People's Organizations of Oaxaca
(CODPO - Coordinator de Organizaciones Democraticas y Populares
de Oaxaca)

-----

FAC-MLN European Representative
170, Res. les Eaux Vives
91120 Palaiseau
France
Tel./Fax: 33-1-69 31 45 40

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