Community Police of Guerrero Denounce Assassination and Arbitrary Detention

The following report comes originally from Radio Zapatista, and details State murder and detention of members of the community police after clashes broke out in Guerrero. In areas of Southern Mexico, the community police have evolved as a defense force against the State and narcos. To here further discussion on them, go here. 

To the People and Communities of the Community System of the CRAC-PC

To the People in General

To the Media

To the Fraternal Organizations

Once again, the state has shown its repressive capacity against the people—a capacity it doesn’t show against criminality, as it should.  It is precisely because the state is now the guardian of, and participant in, that same criminality.

The violent invasion in the community of La Concepción by the state and ministerial police, as well as the army and navy, left five dead and more than 30 detained of our community police compañeros, councilors and authorities. It is clear the action was carried out to rescue Iván Soriano Leal, who is a retired soldier and an agent of the government hired to provoke and generate repression against our Community System.

Iván Soriano Leal, who also appears under other names, was detained in recent days in La Concepción.  He was detained by community police of the local Liaison Committee, accused of being part of an armed group hired to assassinate compañero Marco Antonio Suastegui (spokesperson for CECOP), and other members of the community police.  Leal is the same person who partnered with Eliseo Villar Castillo in 2013, ex-coordinator of the CRAC in San Luis Acatlán, to commit fraud against the organization from which derived a serious internal crisis in the CRAC-PC.  In that case, the government interfered in favor of Eliseo Villar and his accomplices.

On the day of the police invasion of La Concepción, a transfer was planned of Iván Soriano Leal to the House of Justice of San Luis Acatlán.  However, the government, using its police, was able to free him.

The official statements of the spokesperson of security, Álvarez Heredia, as well as the governor, Héctor Astudillo, with which they intend to justify this act of barbaric genocide, are completely false and cynical.  The statements demonstrate their total lack of ethics and morality, ordering the death and incarceration of innocent people.  What weapons of high power do our community police carry?  They want to deceive the population with the old trick of planting drugs on those detained?

The acts that occurred confirm the mode in which the police and military forces operate beneath the consent of the public authorities.  These public authorities recently implemented the unconstitutional and fascist Internal Security Law, providing total impunity to the assassins that mask themselves as public servants.

Far from advancing the harmonization of the official judicial system and the Community System, like we have proposed in our Integral Reform Initiative, the government of the state has shown their true face and intention, assassinating and detaining our community police and authorities.  All this while the local congress of majority PRI officials are freezing the initiative we proposed.

Today the discrimination the government carries out toward our Community System is clearer than ever.  Today they attack our compañeros of the Community System with excessive force, falsely accusing us of carrying high-power weaponry and of possessing drugs, assassinating and detaining us, to rescue a paramilitary agent in their service.  We ask: “Why didn’t the government act with such firmness when an entire family of innocent people was assassinated in San Pedro Cacahuatepec having so much evidence to do so?  What did they get in exchange for letting these assassins remain free?

For the aggression against our Community System, we hold various people responsible: General Pedro Almazán Cervantes, secretary of Public Security; Javier Olea Peláez, Attorney General of the State; and Héctor Astudillo Flores, Governor of the State.  They are the masterminds and authorities that gave the orders to their subordinates to commit an act of such savagery and harm to humanity.  We thus demand their resignation and we call on the organizations and social movements, the students, teachers, etc., to unite ourselves under this demand, and defend ourselves against this assassin political class.

These lamentable acts should instigate everyone to carry out an analysis and reflection, precisely in this electoral year, if we want to continue with an assassin government in power.  This is a government that murders and imprisons us, that defends and is part of the criminality, that creates laws against the people, that negates all opportunity for our development.

We call on the national and international human rights organizations to accompany us, to intervene to document and denounce internationally these acts that injure, not only our Community System, but the people of Guerrero and Mexico in general.

We ask for the intervention of the State and National Commission of Human Rights, to integrate the corresponding investigations for the extrajudicial killings of our compañeros, for the flagrant violation of collective rights of the organized people in the Community System, for the flagrant violation of Law 701 of Recognition, Rights and Culture of the Indigenous People and Communities of Guerrero.

We demand the intervention of the State Congress through the committees of Indigenous affairs, security, justice and human rights, to document the actions of the police agents and their bosses.  These are the people that gave the orders to assassinate and detain those in service of the community who were fulfilling their functions of security and justice in favor of our communities.

We demand the immediate freedom of our detained compañeros.  We demand punishment to those responsible for the extrajudicial killings of our compañeros of the community police.  We demand the exit of the army and navy, as well as the state and ministerial police, from our community territory.  We demand the immediate resignation of Pedro Almazán Cervantes, Javier Olea Peláez and Héctor Astudillo Flores, those responsible for so much death and injustice in our state of Guerrero.

“THE RESPECT FOR OUR RIGHTS WILL BE JUSTICE”

Regional Coordinators, Councilors and Commanders of the Community System CRAC-PC

House of Justice: Matriz de San Luis Acatlán, Espino Blanco, Zitlaltepec, El Paraíso.

Liaison Committee: Tecoanapa, Tixtla, Cacahuatepec, Huamuxtitlan, Chilixtlahuaca, Dos Ríos, Comunidades de la Región Amuzga.