Oaxaca, Saturday 21 October 2006-10-21
Friends,
I hate to send out another e-mail distribution only three days after my last one, but I’m afraid the situation in Oaxaca is threatening to become ugly. The newspapers will write about the struggles within the Teachers Union, which look pretty serious right now, but this note is about an overt attempt to frighten a different group of people who were simply engaged in a dialogue. The Urgent Action alert from the Oaxaca Human Rights Network is posted on their website at
http://www.laneta.apc.org/rodh/spip/article.php3?id_article=111 . The translation is mine.
If you spread the word, and the four parties listed get enough e-mails and/or faxes, it may persuade them to think a military attack would be too costly in terms of world opinion. Thanks for whatever you can do.
All best wishes,
George
_______________________________________________
A Crime against the Workshops of the “Dialogue for Oaxaca”
The Oaxaca Human Rights Network has given prompt follow-up to the development and coordination of the workshops of the “DIALOGUE FOR OAXACA” whose purpose is to analyze and propose, by means of consensus, alternatives to the situation we are living in, with the participation of citizens, representatives of various organizations and social sectors, as well as municipal and agricultural authorities of Oaxaca State. This work began on 12 October this year.
As part of these activities various workshops for discussion and analysis are developing, however the state government is undertaking illegal acts of intimidation against the free development of this citizen dialogue.
ACTIONS
On Friday 20 October 2006, in the course of the fourth session of the workshops of “Dialogue for Oaxaca”, taking place in the building of the Pastoral Center of the Diocese, at 702 Garcia Vigil Street, corner of Cosijopi Street, Center, Oaxaca, at about 7:00pm, the participants of the dialogue workshops noticed that the building in which we were meeting was surrounded by heavily armed judicial (now ministerial) and municipal police. They were dressed as civilians, with military haircuts, openly displaying high caliber arms at waist height, some of them wearing bullet-proof jackets. They had three vehicles (one white, one red, both Chevrolets and the other a recent model black van with polarized windows, all of them without license plates). What we succeeded in observing is that in those vehicles there were about 18 police. We also observed at that moment that they were communicating by means of radios and cellular phones that they carried.
Facing that environment, those of us participating in the dialogue workshops chose to leave in groups, some of us heading towards the zócalo [the main square in the center of the city], because that’s where the APPO encampment is. However, en route, some of us noticed that the police vehicles were followin us.
Because of this situation, the Human Rights Network of Oaxaca, as well as different organizations of civil society participating in the Dialogue workshops for Oaxaca:
DEMAND ENERGETICALLY:
That the Mexican State, specifically the Federal Government, guarantee the security of the various parties that are participating in the Dialogues for Oaxaca.
That the Mexican government take actions in order to end the strategically organized harrassment by the Oaxaca State government against the parties participating in the Dialogues for Oaxaca. The State government has been turning upside down our fundamental rights such as freedom to meet, freedom of expression, and above all crimes against our personal liberty.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oaxacastudyactiongroup/message/1031
It's funny how much organizing the so-called
anarchist Salzman will do to prolong what seems to be his personal communist revolution. I'm not surprised at all that there are authorities watching this group of foreigners that are obviously breaking Mexican "law" by taking part in political activity. While there are interesting tidbits of information coming from this group, the tone of the discussion lately is starting to sound pretty desperate. Kinda funny sometimes. Couple of weeks ago they were actually talking about
Zyclon B attacks.
The OSAG was recently "kicked out" of their regular meeting venue. Here's the message on the
Oaxaca Lending Library's homepage:
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
With the political turmoil in Oaxaca, the Library is working hard to stay neutral and in compliance with Mexican law. For this reason, the Library has found itself verbally attacked and threatened from both sides--the left and the right.
The Board feels that our membership should be aware of these attacks and how we are responding to them. The crisis in Oaxaca has pushed many people, including expatriates, to the extreme left or the extreme right. A Mexican member of the Library told me this is happening in Oaxacan families too, pitting family members against each other. Most of us are old enough to remember how the Viet Nam War polarized Americans against one another. We got through that difficult time and so shall the Oaxacaños survive this crisis.
For several weeks, a group was meeting at the Library to discuss the situation in Oaxaca. Because the discussions were political in nature, the Board checked with Mark Leyes, U.S. Consular Agent in Oaxaca, to confirm that this was not violating Mexican law. He agreed that discussions were acceptable but activism would not be.
A few weeks ago, we received a letter from Linda Anderson (possibly a pseudonym) complaining about"... self described anarchist-communist activist George Salzman," whose views of the situation had been posted on the Crisis page on the Library website which had been set up to provide personal views of the crisis to members and friends outside of Oaxaca. She continued that "The 'report' is little more than propaganda for Mr.Salzmans's political meddling in Oaxaca and provides support for the activities of the APPO."
Salzman's group, Oaxaca Study-Action Group, had invited Stephen Dunifer to address the group. The title of his presentation was "Project TUPA (Transmitters uniting the peoples of the Americas) and Community Radio". In more peaceful times, this topic would have been innocuous but in the present situation it wasn't. Salzman was advised that the speaker could not meet at the Library and the Crisis page was removed from the website (other viewpoints of the crisis by Janet Stanley and Bill Pumphrey had been posted).
The Board decided that the OSAG group should not meet at the Library as it was politically active and did not follow the Library's policy against meetings of political or partisan groups. Salzman met with several members of the Library and the Library Board to protest this decision. At that meeting he accused the Board members of being "Karl Rove" conservatives and threatened to make the group's exclusion "an international incident." The Board stands firm in its prohibition against OSAG or any other politically active group meeting on library premises.
After this confrontation, we received an email from Col. Johnathan Poprik Ret. who referred to the OSAG group as a "radical pinko communist group" and he threatened "If you do not comply with the following demands (for names of OSAG participants among other demands), two Mexican citizens will file a complaint against the library and ask for revocation of all rights and licenses necessary for the library to operate in Mexico. Also each participant or member of the library will be called in and investigated by local authorities and immigration. If evidence proves that they were participating in meetings of the illegal group against the Government, they will undergo deportation hearings."
The Board chose not to respond to Poprik as he is not a member and his charges were NOT BASED ON FACTS.
Rest assured that the Board members collectively and individually are aware of the prohibition against participation in Mexican politics AND WILL CONTINUE TO KEEP THE LIBRARY NEUTRAL AND COMPLIANT WITH MEXICAN LAW. We ask for your support and understanding in these difficult times as we do our best to steer the Library through these troubled waters.