Mexico May Release Evangelical Suspects Of Massacre

[AlphaCentauri]

These news are from a right wing site, everybody knows that evangelicals in Guatemala and Mexico side with the rw governments.

Netherlands-based Open Doors, which assists 79 detained men, said Mexico's Supreme Court decided "to review" the case of 17 prisoners who were sentenced to up to 26 years imprisonment.

The procedure, which is expected to take two months, could “positively” impact the prospects for the other detainees, Open Doors said. "If the request for a review was rejected, there would have been no hope for other prisoners as well," said Open Doors Spokesman Jeno Sebok. He suggested that a positive ruling could increase the prospects for an early release of all detainees.

Earlier, authorities already released several prisoners of the original group of 90 detainees, although they were not declared innocent, BosNewsLife established.

The men currently detained were arrested for their alleged involvement in a massacre just before Christmas in 1997, when 45 Tzotzil Indians were shot and killed in a church in the remote southern village of Acteal in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

NATIVE INDIANS

The inmates, mainly native Indians, were sentenced to prison terms ranging 25 to 36 years, despite evidence that most and probably all men were innocent, Open Doors and other human rights groups said. “The case is very complicated and politically sensitive. Two lawyers have even received letters in which they and their families were threatened,” Open Doors explained.

Investigators claim the 45 Tzotzil Indians, including men, pregnant women and children, were shot and killed by government-backed paramilitary forces who stormed the village church where they were praying.

Human rights group Amnesty International has concluded there is "compelling evidence" that "the authorities facilitated the arming of paramilitaries" to carry out the massacre on December 22, 1997.

The massacre came amid growing tensions in Chiapas where groups, including Zapatistas rebels, have been fighting to end what they view as centuries of discrimination of Tzotzil Indians and others considered excluded from mainstream Mexican politics.

MEXICO'S POOREST

Mexico's 13 million Indians are among the poorest people in the country, with high rates of illiteracy and malnutrition. That, and skewed land distribution in Chiapas, were major factors leading to a 1994 revolt when Zapistas briefly overran villages and tows in the region, analysts say.

At least half of the men jailed since 1997 for the massacre are "evangelical Christians" and several of them "found Christ in prison," Open Doors explained. In a published letter, Acteal prisoners wrote: "We pray day and night, crying to God – not only for ourselves, but also for our families who are completely abandoned. God is our only hope."

Back home, their wives and children reportedly struggle to survive. Their poverty and isolation means they can only visit their husbands once a month, Open Doors said.

The organization works with Mexican lawyers to assist the prisoners. “A group of eight lawyers even volunteered to take up the case as they are convinced that there is enough evidence that most defendants are innocent, “ said Open Doors, which also supports families of evangelical prisoners.

http://www.bosnewslife.com/news/3711-news-alert-mexico-may-release-evangelical

[Judi Lynn]

1. More on the Acteal Massacre:

On December 22, 1997 paramilitary (state-trained and state-funded pro-governing party civil defense) forces surrounded a Catholic chapel in the pacifist Tsotsil Mayan community of Acteal, Chiapas state, Mexico. During a period of several hours, this armed force, with the apparent consent of local Mexican Army units stationed not far away, proceeded to surround Acteal's chapel, and shot to death those inside, and as many of those who escaped as they could find. A number of residents survived the massacre. Those murdered on that day included 15 children, 21 women (four of them pregnant) and 9 men.

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A Short History of the Mayan Freedom Movement and the Armed Conflict in Chiapas, Mexico - From a DC Committee of Indigenous Solidarity Brochure - Fall, 1999

On January 1st, 1994, poor Indian Peoples in Chiapas rose up not “in arms” but with their bodies and who during the dark night before the dawn of a new day occupied 7 towns in the Chiapas highlands including its capitol city of San Cristobal de las Casas without firing a shot!...

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) astounded thousands of unbelieving Mexicans and inspired tens of thousands around the world, including many indigenous tribes throughout the Americas...

The auspicious date of January 1, 1994 was intentionally selected by the EZLN because on that day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was imposed upon Mexico. ...NAFTA included the US demand that Mexico remove the Ejidos from Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution. Ejidos are communal farmlands set apart for the Indians for their survival crops. Transnational corporations now want those lands to exploit (mine) subsoil resources...

...Since February 9, 1995, the Mexican Army and Government have been carrying out a low-intensity war against the Zapatistas. This warfare is directed primarily against the 1,111 indigenous communities in Chiapas who are Zapatista sympathizers.

...A huge escalation in the use of state security forces and PRI -allied paramilitary groups has caused terrible suffering. Pro-Zapatista towns have faced harassment, the rape of women, beatings, expulsions, murders, and the stealing of grain and farm tools.

This repression escalated significantly in the Summer and Fall of 1997, culminating in the Acteal Massacre on December 22, 1997 in which 45 Indian women, children and men were killed in addition to 21 severely wounded, most of whom were children. This criminal act was perpetrated by 60 local poor Indians recruited by local PRI officials and armed with AK-47 automatic rifles. At the time (and presently) over 70,000 Mexican Army troops and hundreds of state security agents occupied Chiapas.

http://www.libertadlatina.org/Crisis_Mexico_Chiapas_Acteal_Massacre.htm

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10 Years Later, Chiapas Massacre Still Haunts Mexico



Jennifer Szymaszek for The New York Times
Estela Luna Vásquez at a recent Mass in Acteal for women whose husbands were accused
of involvement in the 1997 massacre.

By MARC LACEY
Published: December 23, 2007

ACTEAL, Mexico — It was 10 years ago that gunmen crept down the hillside into the center of this impoverished Indian village in Chiapas State. By the time they fled hours later, the attackers had littered the ground with bullet casings and killed 45 innocent people, including 21 women and 15 children.

Since the Acteal massacre, on Dec. 22, 1997, dozens of people have been arrested and convicted. But the case remains as foggy as the community, which is so high in the hills that clouds sometimes linger at ground level and the lush vegetation can disappear into the haze.

Then-President Ernesto Zedillo, reacting to international outrage over the killings, ordered an aggressive investigation. What prosecutors found was ugly: While local government officials and police officers had not wielded the weapons that day, they had allowed the slaughter to occur and tampered with the crime scene afterward.

The killers had been members of the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. The victims were Roman Catholic advocates from a group called Las Abejas, or The Bees, who sympathized with the Zapatista rebels who were in open revolt in Chiapas.

All involved were poor Tzotzil Indians, many of them related.

A decade after the massacre, the Tzotzil live side by side but divided. In one group, the one that backs the PRI, many of the men have been sent to prison for the killings. The others, from the Abejas group, who live down the road, insist that even more killers are at large.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s courts struggle to handle what has grown into one of the country’s longest and most complex cases. A dozen judges have been involved in the trials and, now, the appeals of their convictions.

A year ago, the public interest law clinic at Mexico City’s Center for Investigation and Economic Studies began defending those convicted of taking part in the massacre. Lawyers say they have found that outrage over what happened to the innocents that day led to more abuses. They describe an effort to round up anyone, which sent many other innocent people to prison. “The Acteal case shows all the problems of Mexico’s criminal justice system,” said Javier Angulo, who teaches constitutional law at the center and supervises a team of students who are representing the Acteal defendants. “We solved the problem of the Acteal massacre by creating other problems and arresting people who did nothing at all.”

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/world/americas/23acteal.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

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Another way of looking at this, "whose will was carried out here? Who benefited? Who would have been satified by this act, using proxy murderers?"

[AlphaCentauri]

2. I remember at that time we were collecting money to buy a page in the N.Y. Times

to protest and grab the attention of the Big media about that killing, too bad we only could collect enough money for a small ad. it's really expensive to buy "freedom of speech"