The Dirty War of Oaxaca [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Weekend Edition
December 2 / 3, 2006

Amongst Flames of Resistance, Came Death, Torture and a Clandestine Movement
The Dirty War of Oaxaca
By BARUCHA CALAMITY PELLER

~snip~
The past week has resulted in over 171 detained, a number that rises everyday. 142 of those detained during weekend clashes were transported to a high security prison in Nayarit, a state over a hundred miles north of Oaxaca. The majority of these prisoners are out of communication with the outside and are assumed to be suffering torture. Human Rights organizations in Oaxaca and Nayarit say that they are aware of at least 36 cases of torture, and the few families who have been able to speak with their detained relatives say that they are badly beaten and that women are being threatened with rape. There is at least one report of a prisoner being tortured in order to sign a false confession of having participated in the damages to the capital under the pretext that the APPO paid him. Amongst those detained there are many accounts of arbitrary detentions, and prisoners who have nothing to do with the APPO. Human Rights organizations in Oaxaca say that the combined number of women raped by police or disappeared is over 60.

Participants in the Oaxacan social movement only expect the conditions of repression to worsen, especially with the entrance of Felipe Calderon of the PAN (National Action Party) into presidency todayA week and a half ago Calderon stated that upon entering into office he would do away with all social movements, no matter how many dead would have to fall.

During the Saturday night roundup, which resulted in at least 3 people killed and another 25 disappeared in the same twenty four hours, a hotel worker said that he came across a group of PFP officers who boasted to him that they had already killed 13 people, and that the press would never know because the bodies had been disappeared.

A Week of Hunting

The form in which the government is carrying out the operation to do away with the movement makes it apparent that it is not only an operation, but a spectacle of repression meant to cause psychological trauma and a widespread fear to prevent further uprising.
(snip/...)

http://www.counterpunch.org/peller12022006.html