SOLIDARITY AND SUPPORT REQUESTED FOR VOCAL AND THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT IN OAXACA

We of the space called Oaxacan Voices Constructing Autonomy and Freedom
(VOCAL) are writing to denounce the serious climate of harassment,
criminalization, and persecution that the Ulises Ruiz Ortiz government
and the local news media have directly unleashed against some of our
members in recent weeks.

In particular, the repression began to get heavier after the events of
June 20, 2008, when the organized people impeded Ulises Ruiz Ortiz’s
presence in a public act convened by the municipal government of Zaachila.

They are blaming our members for initiating violence, when this was
provoked by the PRI party municipal President Noe Perez, and his father,
Mr. Natalio Pérez, who pistol in hand, fired at people peacefully
protesting to defend themselves against the imposition of Ulises Ruiz
Ortiz’s presence in their lands. This aggression is documented in photos
and videos.

Nevertheless, for several days the local news media, echoing the
statements of Ulises Ruiz and other government functionaries, have
spread the story on television, radio, and in the written press that the
violence was provoked by some of the schoolteachers in the town of
Zaachila, 'el Alebrije' (David Venegas), and VOCAL members. Threats
have been circulated in these same news media that the full force of the
law will be brought to bear against those who provoked the violence,
thereby putting the blame on the people’s organization that is alive as
a movement. In response to this resistance, the government’s response is
clearly to try to discredit movement organization in Oaxaca with the
same old dirty strategies: seeking out leaders to co-opt, repressing
activists, blocking alternative information pages, stepping up the
arrest of graffiti artists and beating them before they turn them loose,
making false accusations, and intimidating all those movement spaces in
struggle who aren’t willing to negotiate the dignity of resistance; this
dignity is visible in the reorganization going on among different
peoples in the neighborhoods, barrios, collectives, and spaces, and it
resounded in the streets on June 14, 2008. At the same time, the police
presence is steadily increasing and there are calls for the application
of more federal force.

Direct harassment against us has occurred in news broadcasts on Channel
9, the state TV channel, with photos displayed of several VOCAL members:
Silvia Gabriela Hernández Salinas, Efraín López, Eduardo Zanabría, Rubén
Valencia, and David Venegas Reyes. News reports say that there are
warrants out for all these comrades and that they will be arrested any
minute.

They accuse us of provoking violence in our state of Oaxaca with the
clear intent of justifying repression, prison, and even our
disappearance by the government in complicity with the news media at
their service.

Our case is not an isolated example; on the contrary, it is a symptom of
the wave of repression against all the rest of the comrades in the
Oaxacan social movement who are beset by the permanent police presence.

The police presence at many of our private homes and meeting places is
constant. We consider the risk of being arrested as latent and highly
probable. It is this situation that prompts us to make this climate of
repression and harassment public. We will not let these hostilities
continue; they clearly reveal the climate of repression by the state and
federal government against all of us who participate in the Oaxacan
social movement. The true motives that the state is now directing its
repression against VOCAL, just as it has against other movement comrades
in other circumstances, are clear. We are true to our word and keep up
our clear, public, peaceful participation in the social movement in
Oaxaca and ceaselessly struggle for the demands of our movement to
overthrow Ulises Ruiz Ortiz: punishment for the murderers of our people,
freedom for all political prisoners, and an in depth transformation in
Oaxaca.

We know we’re not the only ones at risk because different peoples,
collectives, organizations, teachers, and neighborhoods are also in
struggle, making it possible to strengthen the social movement in
Oaxaca. We are being targeted now because we have responded to calls for
solidarity and support that some of the peoples have sent out to the
movement as a whole, and we have done it in solidarity as brothers and
sisters. This poses a serious risk for the state at a time when it is
bent on dividing and conquering a social movement in Oaxaca that is
setting out on the road towards a true, deep, radical change in our
society—a change born in the people’s roots and nourished by the
ancestral wisdom almost blotted out during the last 500 years of such
heavy imposition and injustice. Today Oaxaca says enough is enough!
We’re not willing to live the way we have before. After 2006, nothing or
nobody will ever be the same again.

We demand justice, freedom, and an end to the hostilities against the
social movement as a whole and against our comrades Silvia Gabriela
Hernández Salinas, Efraín López, Eduardo Zanabría Hernández, Rubén
Valencia Núñez and David Venegas Reyes, and ask all of you comrades to
help us in spreading the word about our situation. No matter how hard
they try to silence us or stop us, we know what they’re trying to do and
we’re not going to let them do it. We’ll never tire of denouncing their
repression.

Ulises Ruiz out of Oaxaca!

Freedom for all political prisoners in Oaxaca, Mexico, and the world!

Punishment for all those guilty of murders and disappearances!

Freedom and justice for the peoples of Oaxaca!

Voces Oaxaqueñas Construyendo Autonomía y Libertad, (VOCAL)

Important note: To help us in the collective dissemination of this mail,
we ask that you write “Adhesión comunicado” on the subject line.

The communiqué and list of adhesions will appear at:
www.vocal.lahaine.org
Address for sending notice of adhesions:  vocal@riseup.net

Send a copy of this communiqué to:

Felipe Calderón, Presidente,  felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx

Lic. Juan Camilo Mouriño Terrazo, Secretario de Gobernación
 jcmourino@segob.gob.mx

Lic. Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza, Procurador General de la República
 ofproc@pgr.gob.mx,  wmaster@pgr.gob.mx

Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, Des-Gobernador del Estado de Oaxaca,
 gobernador@oaxaca.gob.mx

Evencio Nicolás Martínez Ramírez, Procurador del Estado de Oaxaca,
 buzonciudadano@pgj.net

United Nations High Commission for Human Rights
 tb-petitions@ohchr.org

Representative in Mexico of the Office of the UN High Commission for
Human Rights  oacnudh@hchr.org.mx

Jina Hilani, Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Human
Rights Defenders  manstett.hchr@unog.ch