International delegation of human rights observers visits Mexican political prisoners...

From August 24^th to August 30^th, 2002, an international delegation of human rights observers went to southern Mexico to assess the situation of the political prisoners. What we found during our visits to 50 political prisoners in five different prisons -including a maximum-security prison- of four Mexican states is that there are Mexicans incarcerated because of their ideas.







 

In our visit to the Acapulco Jail, we met with 19 members of the organization of environmentalist peasants of Guerrero (OCESP). They are people that because of their defense of the forest opposed very powerful interests of rich people as the president of the cattle association of Guerrero, Rogaciano Alba Alvarez. The environmentalist peasants were preventing Alba’s workers from clear-cutting the forest. Rogaciano Alba is a powerful local boss that does destroy the forest to cultivate puppy flowers and marijuana. He is using the Mexican Army and a paramilitary group he has created to end the opposition to the destruction of the forest. Under this low intensity conflict strategy, Rogaciano Alba, his paramilitary group, the Guerrero State Judicial Police, and the Mexican Army have assassinated several environmentalist peasants. Others have been disappeared, tortured, or put in jail.

We also met Alfredo Torres Garcia, who is the president of the environmentalist peasants in the Acapulco jail.  He told us that he has no more family because Alba’s men have murdered 9 of his family members. The last family member he has lost is his cousin, Meregildo Torres, who was assassinated on August 14^th, 2002, in El Tremendo, Guerrero. The murderer decapitated Meregildo and brought the head back to Rogaciano Alba to receive a reward. We heard, as well, that another environmentalist peasant was burned alive. 

Most of the political prisoners have been apprehended without a detention warrant. The Mexican Army has arbitrarily detained some of them. The political prisoners have also faced incommunicado periods that range from just a few hours up to 9 months. Almost all of them have been subjected to torture.  Torture has been used to extract false confessions, which are used to accuse the political prisoners of crimes they didn’t commit, and to condemn them to several years of prison, i.e. 40 years of prison.

In Oaxaca, we visited 15 Zapotec indigenous political prisoners of the Loxicha region.  In the year 1996, this region was considered by the government to be the bastion of a guerrilla opposition group. Mass military presence was sent to the region to perform counter-insurgency operations that included surrounding the communities and gathering the inhabitants at the plazas. The soldiers had black lists with some of the locals’ names. Those people were taken away by the military.  Some of them never came back. 150 people were arrested at that time, including the municipal authorities, which were supplanted by a government-appointed administrator, who organized a paramilitary group called “Los Entregadores” that is still active in the area.

In the maximum-security prison of La Palma, we visited 8 political prisoners -in two groups of four-. First, the political prisoners were very happy to be able to see each other because despite of the fact that they are held in the same prison, and some of them in the same area of the prison, contact among them is forbidden. They cannot see each other, nor they can talk to each other. They cannot lend a book to a cellmate because that is enough to receive punishment.  They are subjected to punishments for menial things. They have no privacy because there is a camera on all the time everywhere in the prison. The plaque of concrete in the ground is so thick that if the prisoners play basketball they hurt their knees. The political prisoners denounced the use of torture in the jail to the extent that a common prisoner died while he was being tortured. The subsequent medical report stated that the prisoner suffered a stroke.  

Among these political prisoners, we met the Cerezo brothers, Alejandro, Hector, and Antonio of 21, 22 and 24 years old respectively. They were taken prisoners one year ago, on August 13^th, 2001, and accused of throwing firebombs to automatic bank machines. At the moment of the detention, which took place in their home in Mexico City, they were tortured and forced to sign false declarations. Despite the fact that the government has now dropped the accusation, they still remain in prison because they are considered to be “dangerous”. Sergio Bautista, another political prisoner in La Palma maximum-security prison, denounced that people that have been incarcerated in that jail since it was opened 11 years ago, are now almost crazy.  Some of them have been transferred directly from the maximum-security prison to a psychiatric centre called CEFERETSI. 

In Mexico there is the need for an amnesty law to be passed for all the political prisoners. Despite the fact that the Mexican government does not recognize the existence of political prisoners in the country, we found people who had been incarcerated because they had been active in struggling for social justice, for human rights and in the defense of the environment. Those people were arbitrarily arrested and/or disappeared in clandestine detention centres or military bases where they were tortured by soldiers and intelligence agents. It is important to mention that some of the torturers (i.e. General Alfredo Oropeza Garnica) are graduates of the School of the Americas, now renamed Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, based in United States.

We must do something to stop this cruel policy of the Mexican government. It is necessary that we strengthen mechanisms for the protection and promotion of human rights and of human rights defenders. Thus, it is important to keep a close eye on how the Mexican government faces social discontent, which is the result of economical violence on most Mexicans. Through Neoliberal practices of appropriation, exploitation and privatization, most Mexicans are suffering misery, loss of jobs, and access to the country’s natural resources is every day more limited.  It is international political pressure that can do a difference on the situation of the political prisoners.  Let the Mexican government know that you are aware of the existence of political prisoners in Mexico, and that you won’t support businesses being done at the expense of the original peoples and workers of Mexico. Ask for the release of all political prisoners of Mexico.

No one from the Military has ever been condemned for torture, not even brought to justice because of crimes committed against humanity.

Mexico is a State party of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and has ratified the Convention Against Torture and Other Degrading Treatments or Punishments.

The article 16^th of the Mexican Constitution establishes that in times of peace the army must remain in its barracks; however, the army is a fear factor in the communities and has installed several checkpoints in highways.

President Fox is very concerned about international image. He wants Mexico to look like a democratic country where human rights are respected. However, when it comes to the point of international mobilization for the release of the political prisoners, the Human Rights discourse of president Fox sounds empty and the hypocrisy of the Mexican government is revealed for everyone.

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