[BigBlether] Protest repression in Mexico

[Mike]

apologies cross-posting....

PROTEST REPRESSION IN MEXICO

San Salvador Atenco, Mexico - May 2006-

One killed, many brutally attacked and over 200 jailed in vicious state 
violence - Send protest letters to the Mexican authorities

This is a long e mail but I would urge people to try and make time to read 
as much as they can - the extent of the violence by the police and the state 
forces against the people of Atenco and their supporters is very shocking. 

The context of this state brutality is that Atenco is a strong support base for the 
Other Campaign, a grass-roots movement initiated by the zapatistas, to try
and bring together resistances from below, round Mexico and internationally.
Zapatista spokesperson Marcos is currently touring Mexico to meet people and 
groups in resistance, as part of the Other Campaign.

Within the last few days in Atenco, near Mexico City -
a 14 year old boy was killed by the police, a 20 year old student is in a 
coma and is probably brain damaged, one of the leaders of the Peoples' Front 
in Defense of the Earth was viciously beaten and is in maximum security 
jail, below is a first-hand account by two Catalan women who were arrested 
in Atenco and were two of a number of women seriously sexually assaulted by 
the police, there are reports of the police raping five women and a man, 
over 200 people have been arrested and several have disappeared.

The people of Atenco have been heroically resisting the state attack, and 
supporters of the Other Campaign have marched to Atenco in numbers to give 
physical solidarity.  Solidarity demos have taken place round Mexico and 
internationally.

Below are emails, phone nos and addresses of President Fox of Mexico and of 
the Mexican Embassy and other Mexican state institutions in the UK - please 
try and find the time to write or phone.

The main demands of the people of Atenco are outlined immediately below -

---------------------------------------------------------------
Sub Marcos on the situation in Atenco:
"For us, those men and
women who make up the Peoples' Front in Defense of
the Earth are the Other Campaign in those lands. We
will respect their decisions. We will go wherever
they tell us to go. They have been clear in their
demands: the immediate release of those detained and
the complete withdrawal of the government forces
that are invading their lands."

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Crackdown in Mexico; Death, Injuries and Jail.

Global Exchange
May 06, 2006
By John Gibler



Police Brutality in Mexico.

San Salvador Atenco, Mexico
At 7 AM last Wednesday, May 3rd, state police
blocked 60 flower vendors from setting up their stands at the Texcoco local
market in the State of Mexico, about 20 miles east of Mexico City. The
police beat and arrested those who resisted. The flower vendors called to the
residents of neighboring San Salvador Atenco for help and the Atenco
residents blocked the highway that borders their town and leads to Texcoco.

The police response was overwhelming: hundreds of state and federal police,
most clad in riot gear, arrived to lift the blockade. Atenco resisted, with
machetes, clubs, Molotov cocktails and bottle rockets. The police tried to lift the
blockade five times throughout the day, and five times they were repelled.

The violence was extreme. Photographs published in local papers show Atenco
protestors beating a fallen policemen, police beating tens of fallen
protestors. Severe beatings. Protesters kicking one fallen police officer in
the face, groups of police pulverizing tens of protestors with rocks and
batons.

Police also attacked photographers from both the national and the
international
press. Photographers and television cameramen from Associated Press,
Reuters,
Milenio, Jornada and Televisa all reported beatings and attempts to
confiscate
cameras. Photographs and film coverage of the beatings were published on the
internet and shown on national television. Local and international news
articles however, have not mentioned the systematic police violence against
reporters.

All told on Wednesday, over 50 people were injured and 100 detained by the
police. Protestors took 11 police hostage, but released them to the Red
Cross
later in the evening. A fourteen year-old boy was shot in the chest and
killed
in the afternoon. Local media reported that the boy was killed by
projectiles
from the protestors, but the death certificate said otherwise: bullet wound
to
the chest.



Atenco is famous across Mexico for having resisted in 2002 the forced
displacement from their community to make way for a new Mexico City Airport.
Villagers, mostly small farmers, formed the People's Front in Defense of
Land
(Frente del Pueblo en Defensa de La Tierra) and, wielding their machetes,
became a symbol of popular protest in Mexico.

Organizers from the People's Front have attended several meetings of the
Zapatista's Other Campaign, and hosted subcomandante Marcos' arrival in
Atenco.
During his visit, Marcos promised to align the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation with Atenco's struggle. The Atenco Front, with machetes in hand,
was
in charge of providing security for Marcos during the May first Labor Day
march
to Mexico City's main plaza where the Front's leader, Ignacio Del Valle,
spoke
before tens of thousands gathered in the plaza.

Two days later riot police stormed the house where he had been hiding since
the
attack in Texcoco. At that moment the Televisa cameraman was outside the
house
filming the police operation when some five police officers approached and
repeatedly beat him with clubs. As a result there is no film coverage of the
police raid.

Several newspaper photographers, however, photographed Del Valle's arrival
to
prison several hours later that night. He was carried in a headlock by a
masked
police officer, who, in the photographs, is pointing for the photographers
to
leave the area. Another masked officer walked slightly behind, grabbing Del
Valle's back. The two masked officers walk Del Valle through a gauntlet of a
hundred riot police with helmets and shields. Del Valle's head is covered
with
a towel in the pictures, but his face, swollen and bloody is partially
visible.
Also visible is a blood stain the size of a fist on the groin of his jeans,
evidence of repeated strikes to his testicles.

Police Siege Town, Take over 200 prisoners

The following day, Thursday May 4th, Mexico woke to the bloody images of
violence from the day before. Atenco woke to a police siege that led to
hundreds more wounded and detained.

Around 6:30 AM, over three thousand police surrounded Atenco and invaded,
filling the streets, cutting down everyone in their way with clubs and
firing
tear gas, both to disorient, and to kill. Several protestors were shot in
the
head at close range with metal gas pellets three inches long and an inch in
diameter.

Within two hours the police had occupied Atenco.

Then the terror began. The police went house to house, breaking windows and
doors, pulling people into the street, beating them and then piling them in
police vans and trucks. The police had a masked individual in civilian
clothes
who pointed out which houses to raid. Several people who had participated as
speakers in high-profile Other Campaign events in Mexico City were singled
out
and beaten. One woman who spoke in the Zocalo in Mexico City on May first
was
pulled into the street and kicked repeatedly in the groin.

The police violence on Thursday was indiscriminate. Both mainstream and
alternative press reporters were attacked. Several members of the caravan
that
accompanies the Other Campaign across the country were beaten and arrested.

Samantha Dietmar, a young German photographer who has been covering the
Other
Campaign since January was grabbed in the doorway of her hotel, beaten in
the
face and thrown into a truck. A neighbor who witnessed the attack said that
she
asked why the police were taking her: "What did she do?" The police officer
responded, the woman said: "She did whatever I say she did."

Dietmar was taken to a women's prison on the outskirts of Mexico City. A
human
rights lawyer who was able to interview her said that she had serious pain
in
her eyes from the tear gas, and that she had been beaten in the face and
body.
2 Catalan women, María Sostras y Cristina Valls, were also arrested in
Atenco.
They have now been deported to Barcelona. Both have described how they were
sexually assaulted by police while being taken in vans to the nearby prison.
They also reported that a German man was repeatedly raped by police.

The same lawyer said that five women were raped in the police vans when
taken to
jail.

Between two and three hundred people were detained, but only 109 have been
recognized by the police. A list is circulating on the internet, compiled
from
witness accounts, of 275 people who have been detained. At least 18 people
are
missing.

Hundreds of people sought hiding in houses across the town. In one house, 23
people were packed into a 12-by-12 foot room. Just outside the hiding room,
Alexis Benhumea, a 20-year old economy student in Mexico City, laid
unconscious
for 12 hours. Just after 6:30 AM he was shot in the head with a SPEDE-HEAT
CN
projectile, manufactured by the company, Defense Technology / Federal
Laboratories. This is printed on the projectile: 17CN-LR F206CN Long Range -
150 YDS Single Projectile. The impact broke his skull open in two places,
exposing his brain.

Alexis was carried into a house by his father and two friends for hiding.
One of
the protestors hiding out in the house made an impromptu bandage for the
wound
to stop the bleeding. The thick bandage was soaked in blood by the
afternoon.
Alexis's father and those hiding out in the house so feared for their lives,
and Alexis' life, that they dared not leave their hiding place. Indeed, just
outside the house, state and federal police blocked both ends of the street
and
constantly patrolled up and down the street.

"I was sure that they would kill him and dump him somewhere if I tried to go
out
and seek medical help," said Angel Benhumea, Alexis' father. "I didn't think
he
would make it."

After coordinating by cellular telephones with friends in Mexico City,
correspondents with Indymedia Chiapas were able to rent a taxi van (which
operate in Mexico like public buses rather than individual taxis) and stage
a
rescue, taking Alexis and his father to a hospital 40 minutes away, on the
eastern border of Mexico City. Alexis arrived alive and survived four hours
of
intensive brain surgery: hemorrhaging had filled 30 percent of his brain. At
the time of writing, Alexis' condition is still critical, and the extent of
brain damage is unknown.

Alexis Benhumea was attacked twice: first with the pellet that broke his
skull,
and second with the police siege that made it impossible for his family to
seek
medical attention. If Alexis survives, he will most likely suffer permanent
brain damage.

By mid-afternoon Atenco was an occupied city. Burn marks and broken glass,
thousands of police standing guard, leaning in doorways, lying in stairways,
sprawled out sleeping in the shade of the central plaza. Yet the climate was
tense. When I took a picture from a car window of a group of police, one
whipped around and loaded a gas pellet in his rifle, but not in time to
fire.

Around 5:30 in the afternoon, the state and federal police lifted their
siege,
piling into their trucks and driving off.

Zapatistas March to Atenco

Thursday in the evening the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and local
labor and student organizations called a march for Friday at 4PM from the
University of Chapingo to Atenco.

At 4PM Marcos arrived at the university?leaving the house in Mexico City
where
he had been surrounded by police and federal intelligence officers since
Wednesday evening. About a thousand people had already gathered for the
march
by the time of his arrival.

The march left from Chapingo at around 5PM with some two thousand people.
But
the march kept growing. Standing on overpasses, it was impossible to see the
end of the march as it occupied the highway that leads to Atenco. Estimates
among local reporters ranged from 4 to 10 thousand people by the time the
march
reached Atenco.

As the march crossed through the town of Texcoco, where the violence began
on
Wednesday, locals closed the metal doors used to cover their windows at
night,
making the fear in Texcoco visible and audible. In the four months of the
Other
Campaign, nothing like this has happened before. Yet the police were not
waiting
for the marchers. A few motorcycle state police went ahead of the march, and
several trucks with federal police trailed behind.

The marchers arrived in Atenco without confrontations with the police. In
the
central plaza, several local community leaders and parents whose children
had
been beaten and detained spoke to the crowd that filled the town plaza.

"My boy was on his way to work when they grabbed him," one woman said, "is
that
justice?"

Subcomandante Marcos attacked the media manipulation of the violence in
Atenco,
accusing the government of directing newspaper, television and radio
directors
of holding back images of police brutality while publishing and passing over
and over the same images of protestors beating police.

Marcos held in the air five empty shotgun shells, most likely slug shells,
that
locals found on the ground after the siege. "Here is the proof of who killed
the boy," Marcos said.

He offered to hand one of the shells over to reporters from Televisa and TV
Azteca, the largest media corporations in Mexico, but the reporters refused
to
identify themselves. Marcos said he would grant interviews to any reporter
who
agrees to publish the interview "without cuts or edits," signaling a major
shift in the Zapatista's media policy during the Other Campaign, which had
been
to refuse all interview requests.

Marcos reinstated the Zapatista's support for Atenco and its political
prisoners.

"You are not alone," he said, "We will continue carrying out mobilizations
across the country until all the political prisoners are freed."

He also accused the government of plotting the repression: why were the
police
ready to attack here if the problem was in Texcoco, he asked. "Because they
want their airport once again, and they are coming for your land."

Marcos said that he and participants in the Other Campaign would stay in
Mexico
City indefinitely and called for a national public gathering in Atenco over
the
next two days.

------------------------------------------------------------------
> Here's a Paypal account: to help support prisoner
> solidarity efforts.
> It's set up by the Centro de Medios Libres >
 http://www.vientos.info/presosdonaciones/
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
PROTEST TO THE MEXICAN STATE AUTHORITIES
---------------------------------------------------------------------

PRESIDENT FOX OF MEXICO

 Vicente Fox Quesada
 Presidente de la República
Residencia Oficial de los Pinos Casa Miguel Alemán
Col. San Miguel Chapultepec, C.P. 11850, DISTRITO FEDERAL, México
 telephone
(55) 27891100
(55) 52772376
vicente.fox.quesada at presidencia.gob.mx

More Mexican government contacts here
http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/directorio/


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Mexican Embassy to the United Kingdom
16 St. George Street
Hanover Sq.
London W1S 1LX
tel. +44 (0)20 7499 8586
fax. +44 (0)20 7495 4035
e-mail: mexuk at easynet.co.uk

Ambassador, Juan José Bremer de Martino
Deputy Head of Mission, Abel Abarca Ayala


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Mexican Government Offices in the UK

MEXICO TOURISM BOARD
Wakefield House
41 Trinity Square
London EC3N 4DJ
Tel: (44-020) 7488 93 92
Fax: (44-020) 7265 07 04
uk at visitmexico.com

Sr. Manuel Enrique Díaz Cebrián
Minister (Information and Tourism)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
regular updates at www.narconews.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

more info on request to myself, and/or contact
Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group
edinchiapas at yahoo.co.uk
 www.edinchiapas.org.uk



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