The Other Campaign Mobilizes in Response to Aggressions Against the Zapatistas of Bolom Ajaw

OPDDIC attacks against Zapatistas intensify
Hermann Bellinghausen
La Jornada, Friday, November 23, 2007

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, November 22. In recent days, armed men, members of the PRI-affiliated Organization for the Defense of the Indigenous and Campesino Rights  (OPDDIC) have attacked the Zapatista support bases of the community Bolom Ajaw, in addition to making death threats against the autonomous support bases. At least on one occasion, the PRIistas have fired in the air and threatened the Zapatistas with clubs and machetes. The most recent attack occurred last Monday.

The Good Government Junta (JBG) "Heart of the Rainbow of Hope" with seat in the Caracol of Morelia, has denounced that on that day about 19 OPDDIC members, eight armed with firearms and the rest with machetes and clubs, have confronted about thirty Zapatista campesinos on the field of their community, Bolom Ajaw, in the region La Montaña of the autonomous municipality Olga Isabel (on the outskirts of the official municipality Tumbalá). According to the Junta, the OPDDIC members operated with mobile radios and photo cameras.

Although the aggressions against the Zapatistas committed by members of the OPDDIC, to which the majority of the inhabitants of the community Agua Azul (next to the tourist resort of the same name) belong are constant, the situation has worsened on November 13. On that day OPDDIC members invaded the field of Bolom Ajaw, attempting to cultivate it themselves. With firearms caliber 38 and 22 they fired shots in the air, threatening with "having good arms", and warned the Zapatista support bases, that "if they don't leave the place, they would rip them to pieces and throw their corpses into the river". The Zapatistas continued working on sowing their corn, but on being threatened with machetes they "dispersed in order to not respond to the provocation". On the way home they were intercepted by other OPDDIC members "in a state of inebriation".

On November 16 the collective store of the San Jóse region near the highway Ocosingo -Palenque, received a message: "We are advising the EZLN members in Bolóm Ajaw to leave as soon as possible, because the Army will enter the place tomorrow or tonight". Unknown persons in a van type Urvan of the Las Brisas society delivered this note to the OPDDIC member Juan García López, who presented it to the store.

On November 17 a commission of the OPDDIC arrived in Bolom Ajaw, consisting of Salomón Moreno Estrada, Jerónimo Urbina López, Manuel Hernández López and José Alberto Gabina López, together with José Hernández Nava, who claimed to be from the National Commission for Natural Protected Areas (CNAP). This commission had supposedly come to "investigate" the "rumor" that Bolom Ajaw "had been deserted by its inhabitants". He insisted on interrogating the Zapatistas about this, without saying from where he had received this false information. When the Zapatistas assembled the "commission" withdrew.

Then followed the aggression on Monday 19. The JBG "rejects these actions of the paramilitary right arm of the bad federal and state government" and makes the government responsible "for everything that could happen in Bolom Ajaw, on the banks of the Agua Azul river".

originally published in Spanish by La Jornada

translated by Dana

Members of the PRI-affiliated group beat a sick man unconscious with clubs, the JBG reports
Second incursion in only four days; the objective is to displace the EZLN support bases
Hermann Bellinghausen
La Jornada, Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Ejido Morelia, Chiapas, November 26. The Good Government Junta (JBG) “Heart of the Rainbow of Hope” denounced today the serious incidents which took place in the Zapatista community Bolom Ajaw on November 24. “At 11:00 in the morning, 80 people pertaining to the Organization for the Defense of the Indigenous and Campesino Rights (OPDDIC) violently invaded the new population center Bolóm Ajaw, in the mountain region of the Autonomous Municipality in Rebellion Olga Isabel. They carried firearms, machetes and clubs. Twenty people carried 22 and 38 caliber weapons, and six more carried rifles while the rest were armed with clubs and machetes.

“On arriving they encountered only women, children and a compañero health-promoter named Manuel Hernández. All the other compañeros had left to work on their land.”

Manuel Hernández “although he was ill, was brutally beaten; he was kicked and hit with clubs all over his body until he lost consciousness. The assailants told them to leave the place immediately with their group, or otherwise they would all die. After committing this vile and shameful act of brutality they left the place”.

With these words the JBG reports the most recent aggression of “the paramilitary organization OPDDIC” against this community, located on the banks of one of the rivers most coveted by the tourist industry and its governmental intermediaries: the Agua Azul. For a while now the PRI-affiliated organization has been attacking the Tzeltal inhabitants of Bolom Ajaw, with open official endorsement.

On this night, at 20:00 hrs, in the Ejido Agua Azul of the official municipality Tumbalá, “the boy Miguel Perez Alvaro, 8 years of age, son of a compañero Zapatista support base, left his house to fetch water in a distance of about 40 meters where the light was good. He was surprised by four persons from the OPDDIC, (the same ones who participated in the attacks in Bolóm Ajaw), named Florentino Silvano Pérez, Alexander Gómez Hernández, Marcos López Silvano and Miguel Hernández López. They grabbed the child and twisted both his wrists until he screamed in pain. Once the child had screamed out they released him and fled”.

In view of these incidents “of such bold injustice and complete impunity on the part of those who claim to be a government of the rule of law”, the JBG of the Caracol “Whirlwind of Our Words” demand “the full application of justice and the immediate punishment of the people responsible: Jeremías Lopez Hernández, Salomón Moreno Estrada, Adolfo Moreno Estrada, Alberto Urbina López, Jerónimo Urbina López, Florentino Silvano Pérez, Alejandro Gómez Hernández, Marcos López Silvano and Miguel Hernández López”.

The mentioned persons, inhabitants of the Ejido Agua Azul, have “cynically” attempted, “not for the first time, to harass, violate and kill our compañeros”, the Junta continues, “who have done nothing more than to fight and to resist, despite of the fact that, being indigenous, they are our brothers of race and color”.

The siege continues

Only last Tuesday, November 20, the campesinos of Bolom Ajaw were threatened on their lands with machetes and gunfire in the air (as reported here on November 23). At least since September the OPDDIC hostility in the region against the Zapatista community has been continuous, but as of November 13 it has further aggravated. The JBG declares now:

“Therefore we say to the bad government that we had enough (ya basta!) of the impunity for the violations of the human and constitutional rights. Enough of misusing our indigenous and campesino brothers, who suffer in misery the injustice and the paramilitarization (which) you yourself are implementing by using them to massacre the poor and working people”.

The terms of the presumed reclamation of the OPDDIC are not clear. On the one hand they invade Zapatista lands with the intention to seize them, and on the otheraisw they serve as spearhead for federal institutions like the Secretariat of Agrarian Reform, the National Commission of Protected Areas and the Army, as well as the State Secretary of Government and the Office of Attorney General, to displace the families of Bolom Ajaw settling on recovered land.

They call to attention that the OPDDIC operates with each passing day more like an authentic paramilitary group: in great numbers, equipped with arms and mobile radios and threatening language. “If you don’t leave this place, we will rip you to pieces and throw your corpses into the river”, they boasted last week during another incursion in the Zapatistia community.

Originally published in Spanish by La Jornada

Translated by Dana

Call to boycott Tourism at the Agua Azul Falls due to repression against Zapatistas
CAPISE denounces impunity with which the OPDDIC members are operating
Elio Henríquez
La Jornada. Thursday November 29, 2007

San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, November 28. The Center for Political Analysis and Social and Economic Investigations (CAPISE) has sent a brigade of observers to the community Bolon Ajaw, municipality of Tumbalá, in an attempt to restrain the “brutal repression implemented” against the support bases of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).

At the same time the group has called for a boycott campaign against visits to the Agua Azul Falls - one of the main tourist sites in the area - “until the aggressions, hostilities and eviction threats against the Zapatista support bases of Bolon Ajaw have stopped”.

CAPISE asserted in a communiqué that in the autonomous municipality community of Olga Isabel and in other zones of the indigenous territory of Chiapas, “the intention of forced displacement has raised the tension to the highest limit”. As they reiterated, “the systematic operation of counterinsurgency implemented against the Zapatista communities begins to reach extreme situations”.

The group considers Bolon Ajaw to be one of the central points of tension. For this reason today a special brigade of observers was sent off towards the community Bolón Ajaw, consisting of 12 persons who will stay with the inhabitants of Bolón Ajaw, to offer support and document the incidents perpetrated against them.

They warned that should the members of the mission or any inhabitant of the community be attacked by members of the PRI-affiliated Organization for the Defense of the Indigenous and Campesino Rights (OPDDIC), CAPISE would – for the first time – press charges against the directors of the organization and the direct aggressors.

The charges would further include José Hernández Nava, director of the National Commission for Protected Natural Areas of the South Border region, who is accused by the EZLN support bases of “colluding” with the PRIistas.

The community Bolón Ajaw comprises 339 hectares and was founded on land “recovered by Zapatista support bases in 2001”. At present it consists of 41 families, adding up to a total of 200 inhabitants including adults and children. It is located in the Ejido Agua Azul, like the waterfalls of the same name, which is being exploited by members of the OPDDIC.

CAPISE affirmed that since September 2007, the reality to which the inhabitants of the area are subjected “has become critical (...) the situation for the inhabitants of Bolón Ajaw has been alarmingly aggravated  (…) the level of aggressions has reached a critical point”.

They argued further, “the total impunity with which the members of the OPDDIC are operating, in agreement with señor Jose Hernandez Nava and the detachment of the Public Security police positioned at the highway exit to the Agua Azul Falls is blatant”.

The group called on all organizations and people in Mexico and other countries to protest publicly against “the repression to which the Zapatistas’ indigenous communities are subjected”, and at the same time summoned in the context of the Worldwide Campaign for the Defense of Land and Territory, to carry out a campaign “advising: ‘No visits to the Agua Azul Falls, until the aggressions, hostilities and eviction threats against the Zapatista support bases of the community Bolón Ajaw have stopped’”.

originally published in Spanish by La Jornada

translated by Dana

Согласен с автором . У меня точно такое же мнение :)