CHIAPAS: HUNGER STRIKE CONTINUES/NEEDS SUPPORT

I can't say I knew anything about this before this morning when I received an email from a Zapatista support group.  I have, thus, little to add beyond what you will find below.


The first article is from Sipaz Blog.  The second is a support letter you can sing which came from the Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group.

Chiapas: Two more prisoners join the hunger strike; concentration of family-members at sit-in

Press-conference @ SIPAZ

In a press-conference on 28 October, it was reported that the commission would soon leave to visit Professor Alberto Patishtán Gómez, who was taken to the Federal Center for Social Readaptation (CEFERESO) No. 8 in Guasave, Sinaloa, with the hopes of learning about his present situation, given that his family-members have not been allowed to communicate with him to date.

Cecilia Santiago Vera, representative of the Movement of Solidarity with prisoners on hunger strike, reported that they are awaiting the authorization of the directors of the Guasave prison for the visit of five persons to Patishtán Gómez in the coming days.  The commission is comprised by her, a relative of the prisoner, two lawyers from the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Center for Human Rights (CDHFBC), and Sacario Hernández Hernández, who after being imprisoned from 2003 to 2008 was
released as a result of undertaking a hunger strike.

The CDHFBC reported that it requested that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) solicit from the Mexican government the establishment of precautionary measures so that Alberto Patishtán be returned to prison in Chiapas.  Víctor Hugo López Rodríguez, director of the CDHFBC, said that the IACHR petition also includes a request for precautionary measures in favor of the ten prisoners who continue fasting and on hunger strike since 29 September in the prisons of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Cintalapa, and Motozintla.  López Rodríguez indicated that the CDHFBC has requested before the International Committee of the Red Cross that it carry out a visit to the Guasave prison so as to document the conditions in which Patishtán is being held, in addition to visits to the other imprisoned individuals fasting and on hunger strike.

Sit-in of relatives @ SIPAZ

On last Saturday the 29th, the organizations of the Other Campaign in Chiapas called for a public meeting in the Cathedral Plaza of San Cristóbal de Las Casas.  The Group of the Network against Repression “We are not all here” indicated that “dispersion is also a form of psychological torture and a strategy of social and political disarticulation,” referring to the transfer of Patishtán 2000 km from his home.  In a public denunciation they declared, “On 29 and 30 October, access to the prison was arbitrarily denied to a brigade for medical attention that includes health personnel from Mexico City who traveled there solely to learn about the health-status of those comrades and to afford support.  On Sunday 30 regardless, a day that is for general visits, their entrance was also impeded; moreover, on this same day authorities of the prison prevented by various means the visit to the prison by relatives and friends.”  During that afternoon, there was made a call for a new mobilization on 7 November in front of the palace of governance in Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

Of the eleven who are protesting, two who were previously fasting have taken on a hunger strike: Juan Collazo Jiménez, in the Motozintla prison, and Andrés Núñez Hernández, from Cereso 5 in San Cristóbal. These account now then for 8 prisoners on hunger strike for 34 days.
In a public letter that was read at the press-conference, the hunger-strikers express that “Today our comrade Alberto finds himself in the maximum-security federal prison Cefereso No. 8 in Guasave, Sinaloa, Mexico.  He was taken in the moment that we found ourselves on hunger strike, he fasting, which we began on 29 September so as to demand justice and our release.  Today we cry for help because the government would like to see us die in prison for crimes we have not committed.  Today we complete 29 days on hunger strike and we are unsure when we will be granted our liberty.”  They added: “Similarly we say that our health-situation is in decline; some of our comrades already suffer from memory loss and dizziness, among other symptoms, as in the case of our comrade Rosario Díaz Méndez, who finds her situation very complicated, given that her glucose levels are excessively high.  For our state of health

we hold the State responsible.”

SIGN LETTER IN SUPPORT OF INDIGENOUS PRISONERS ON HUNGER STRIKE

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Since September 29th a group of indigenous prisoners, held in different prisons in Chiapas, and  belonging to the organisations Voice of Amate, Solidarity with the Voice of Amate and Innocent Voices, have been on hunger strike and fast.

Their names are: Professor Alberto Patishtán Gómez, Andrés Núñez Hernández, Alfredo Lopez-Jimenez, Alejandro Diaz Sántiz, Jose Diaz Lopez, Pedro Lopez Jimenez, Juan Diaz Lopez, Rosario Diaz Mendez, Enrique Gómez Hernández, Juan Collazo and compañera Rosa Jiménez Díaz López .

They are all unjustly deprived of their liberty, since the crimes for which they are condemned to extremely long sentences were all fabricated, each and all were tortured physically and psychologically in anonymous houses that have nothing distinctive about them and are clandestine centres of detention and torture.

Their dignified struggle is to denounce the horrors and abuses which exist in the prisons of Mexico and to demand their immediate release.

Many voices are rising around them in solidarity in Mexico and throughout the world. Voices from below which claim and practice a different form of justice away from the state courts and near to the people. Voices which reject this system of domination that is based on exploitation, plunder, repression and contempt. Voices of people who day by day are building thousands of alternatives to a world rotten with capital and its prison bars, whether tangible or intangible. Voices and people who speak different languages, ​​but with the same rhythm, that of the heart, below and to the left.

In their cry of freedom are reflected, as in a mirror, the rage of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners in Israel, of the thousands of migrants who refuse food and rebel in the Identification and Expulsion Centres of Europe where they are unjustly detained ; of the Mapuche who through their very long strikes reject the Anti-terrorist Law;  in this dignified rage can be seen the Kurds in the  Turkish prisons, the Basques tortured in the FIES, the Nigerians and Africans rebelling against the oil multinationals who are imprisoned and executed … all the dissidents imprisoned within wet and dirty walls in every corner of the planet, where they try to crush ideas.

Therefore we appeal to independent organizations, affinity groups, social centres, independent unions, the popular media, and all who act autonomously, and who are complicit and guilty, like us, of wanting a world without fences, without borders and without prisons and invite them to join in solidarity with this dignified struggle of the political prisoners on hunger strike in Chiapas.

Down with prison walls!
Freedom for everyone!
If they touch one of us, they touch all of us!

Please send your signatures to this email address, before the night of Sunday November 6^th, Mexican time:noestamostodxs@riseup.net

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SIGNED:

Red contra la Represión y por la Solidaridad Chiapas (RvsR Chiapas)
Grupo de Trabajo No Estamos Todxs (Chiapas)
Colectivo Nodo Solidale (Mexico e and Italy)

Get Involved

We invite you to join our email list (sign up here) and to attend our regular organising meetings.

Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group,
c/o 17 West Montgomery Place
Edinburgh
EH7 5HA
Scotland

Email: edinchiapas@yahoo.co.uk

Or click here for our Facebook page

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The EdinChiapas group is part of the 'UK Zapatista Network': ukzapatistas.wordpress.com