|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT-MEXICO:
Yet More
Casualties in War on Indigenous
Activists
Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, (IPS) - The
”war” waged on indigenous
environmental activists by
loggers in Mexico has claimed
the lives of two more victims,
including a nine-year-old boy,
while local and international
non-governmental organisations
report continued arbitrary
arrests of campesinos struggling
to protect the forests.
”Campesino (peasant farmer)
environmentalists are being
systematically attacked. The
latest incidents only serve to
underscore the persecution and
repression they suffer, and the
total impunity enjoyed by the
perpetrators,” said Verónica
Bassot, spokesperson for
Tlachinollan, a human rights
group that works with campesino
organisations.
The mountains of the
southwestern state of Guerrero
are plagued by uncontrolled
logging.
There are 17 municipalities in
the region with predominantly
indigenous populations - either
full-blooded or mixed-race
members of the Nahuatl, Mixtec
and Tlapaneco ethnic groups -
and 11 of these have been
classified by official
government studies as ”highly
marginalised”. One is considered
the poorest municipality in the
entire country.
Satellite images reveal that
between 1999 and 2000 alone,
some 86,000 of the 226,203
hectares of forest cover in the
mountains disappeared, according
to figures from the
international environmental
watchdog Greenpeace.
The latest casualties in this
undeclared war were a
nine-year-old boy and his
20-year-old brother, shot dead
Thursday night in the Guerrero
mountains.
The victims were the sons of
Albertano Peñalosa, leader of
the Campesino Environmentalist
Organisation of the Sierra of
Petatlán and Coyuca de Catalán (OCESP),
who was wounded in the attack,
along with two other sons.
The next day, the Mexican army
arrested three of Peñalosa's
fellow OCESP members, on charges
of killing a logger's son. They
will join Felipe Arreaga who has
been in jail since last November
for the same reason, and is
considered a prisoner of
conscience by Amnesty
International.
In a telephone interview from
the mountains of Guerrero,
Bassot told IPS that the
destruction of the forests and
the violence against
environmentalists fighting to
defend them are the work of
”powerful caciques (local
political bosses) who do as they
please, and even enjoy a certain
amount of protection from the
military troops that patrol the
area.”
”The government of the state of
Guerrero (led since Apr. 1 by
Zeferino Torreblanca of the
leftist Democratic Revolution
Party, or PRD) and President
Vicente Fox are not taking
action, and that is why impunity
and fear continue to reign here
in these mountains,” she added.
Like the rest of the campesinos
from the Guerrero mountains
currently in custody and the
father of the two boys murdered
last week, Rodolfo Montiel and
Teodoro Cabrera are also OCESP
members. In 1999, they were
arrested and tortured by
soldiers on trumped-up weapons
and drugs possession charges.
Montiel and Cabrera were finally
released in 2001, after Fox
granted them a presidential
pardon on health grounds.
While still in prison, the two
men were awarded the Goldman
Prize, established by U.S.
non-governmental organisations
and considered the
”environmental Nobel”. They were
also granted the Chico Mendes
award, named for the Brazilian
campesino, trade unionist and
environmentalist murdered in
1988.
The 2005 Goldman Prize - which
comes with a 125,000-dollar cash
award - went to another
indigenous environmental
activist, Isidro Baldenegro, who
was imprisoned on weapons and
drug charges in March 2003.
Baldenegro was released in June
2004 after numerous
denunciations of irregularities
in his case, and campaigns waged
by environmental and human
rights groups who declared him a
prisoner of conscience.
Local and international human
rights groups maintain that
OCESP members are persecuted
solely for the fact that they
oppose the destruction of the
forests, much of which is caused
by illegal logging.
The campesinos taken into
custody on Friday are accused of
participating in the 1998 murder
of the son of Bernardino
Batista, the leader of a loggers
association.
”All of these cases are fraught
with injustice and
irregularities, in which the
army and the police work as
instruments of the loggers,”
stressed Bassot.
”It is shameful to see the way
defenders of the environment are
persecuted and their struggle is
criminalised,” she added.
London-based Amnesty
International has repeatedly
highlighted the ”misuse of the
judicial system in Mexico to
silence or deter dissidents or
opposition by civil society
through the use of fabricated or
unfounded criminal charges,”
particularly in the case of
environmental activists.
According to reports from
Tlachinollan, ”the army has
taken over as the authority
exercising both police and
military control” in the
Guerrero mountains.
Army troops force their way into
indigenous communities, eat
their food, drink their water,
and interrogate, arrest and
intimidate locals on the grounds
that they are enforcing the
federal weapons and explosive
laws and fighting drug
trafficking, state the reports.
”Let me put this very clearly:
you get in the way of certain
interests, and that's the
problem, that's why I'm here,”
OCESP member Felipe Arreaga told
IPS in November, shortly after
being sent to prison.
Similar statements were made by
Montiel and Cabrera during their
own incarceration. Since their
release, they have been living
practically underground outside
the state of Guerrero, for fear
of an attempt on their lives.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
