Huajuapan de León, Oaxaca: Community Radio Ñuu Dee Denounces Police Intimidation

The following statement comes a community radio station facing police repression. Almost two years ago, police in Huajuapan de León killed Salvador Olmos, an anarchist, activist and radio worker. 

The Community Radio Ñuu Dee, “You Are You, I am Me, We Are Everyone”, is the voice of the brave men and women. It is a means of communication that proposes to disseminate, preserve, and make visible the uses and customs (celebrations, gastronomy, forms of social organization, language, and problems) of the people of the Lower Mixteca of Oaxaca.

Furthermore, the Community Radio Ñuu Dee is a space where children, men, women and elders come together with different visions of the world. It is also a space where Indigenous people of the Mixteca region come together. Our radio has sought to be a point to connect diverse social sectors of the city of Huajuapan de León and those areas where the transmission of our signal can be heard. The Community Radio Ñuu Dee promotes the protection of the natural environment pertaining to the Indigenous people of the Mixteca region.

This space took to the airwaves on October 8th, 2017, at a moment when the citizenry of this part of Oaxaca needed to unify to meet the most pressing needs in the face of the natural disasters that took place in the month of September of 2017. These needs were ever more important due to the inaction of the Mexican State in the most marginalized and affected communities.

The Community Radio Ñuu Dee is a collective force of ex-radio workers and communicators that saw their different spaces closed due to the virulent action of the Mexican state or due to the financial insolvency of the projects themselves.

The Community Radio Ñuu Dee is a dialectical synthesis where leaders of different social sectors, youth collectives, elders, women leaders of districts and neighborhoods of the region, and girls and boys interested in involving themselves in community media, come together. Each and every one of them are dedicated to returning the voice of the citizenry of the city of Huajuapan de León and its nearby communities.

The Community Radio Ñuu Dee also covers the information gap that exists in programs of culture, education, health, psychology, non-commercial music, legal advice, social and political options with a progressive vision. Furthemore, a perspective in defense of the human rights of the women and different social sectors. The programming is far from the typical programming of commercial radios that only entertain and do not encourage reflection.

We want to emphasize that it has been beneath the values of tequio (communal work) and the Oaxacan Guelaguetza, that the women and men that make up this project have contributed their work, their time and their help to build this modest space of everyone and for everyone.

Acts:

After nearly seven months of uninterrupted transmissions, the Community Radio Ñuu Dee has been harassed and intimidated by the presence of municipal police surveillance from the city of Huajuapan de León.

1. More than two weeks ago, May 7th, 2018 to be precise, at approximately 4:15 in the afternoon, the patrol car with number 060, of the municipality of Huajuapan de León, was parked no more than 20 meters from the facilities of Community Radio Ñuu Dee. The radio workers of the opinion program “Sin Fuero” signaled that outside of the facilities of the radio there was a patrol car. That day, they had to close and turn off the microphones because of the rain and our lack of a lightning rod. At 4:35 in the afternoon, we decided to leave and close the radio station. Next, we got into our vehicles and took the avenue ermite toward the center of the city of Huajuapan. Immediately and without disguise, the aforementioned patrol car 060 followed us along the avenue to the junction with the international highway. At that point, the patrol car turned to the north on highway 2 de abril, losing itself in traffic.

2. On Thursday, May 10th, 2018, around noon, the same patrol car parked 15 meters from the facilities of the Community Radio Ñuu Dee. The compañero responsible for the transmission from 12-1 reported the acts and took photographs of what was happening. The patrol car was parked in that space for some thirty minutes.

3. On Friday May 11th, around 4:30 in the afternoon, again a patrol car of the municipality of Huajuapan de León was parked some 15 meters to the side of the Community Radio Ñuu Dee. This patrol car remained there for some 30 minutes.

4. Saturday, May 12th, 2018, at approximately 3:25 in the afternoon, the patrol car 060 again parked some 20 meters from the Community Radio Ñuu Dee. The compañeros radio workers, in the face of the presence of the patrol car, decided to step outside the radio and ask the cop in the patrol car what was the motive for their continued presence in the area, and if there was a reason that they had remained around or on the street Laguna Tecomates where the radio is located. The cop in the patrol car only answered saying that they were carrying out surveillance that the inhabitants of the neighborhood had requested. There are recorded videos of these acts which have been distributed in social media for public knowledge.

5. The same Saturday, May 12th, 2018, around 10:39 pm, again there was a police presence outside of the Community Radio Ñuu Dee shining their lights momentarily on the door at the entrance to the radio.

6. Since this past Friday, May 11th, 2018, the frequency that transmits the Community Radio Ñuu Dee, 96.9 FM, has had interruptions and cannot be heard on the receivers located in the center of the city of Huajuapan de León.

It must be made clear that the project of the Community Radio Ñuu Dee incorporates collaborators and radio workers that immigrated from the teacher’s radio Tuu Ñuu Sa’vi, among them various young people that pertained and formed part of the social collective of the assassinated radio worker Salvador Olmos García. And others that had relations with the assassinated radio worker Agustín Pavía Pavía of that same radio.

Declare and Demand:

We hold responsible the municipal authorities and police of the municipality of Huajuapan de León, Oaxaca for the security and well-being of each one of the compañero and compañera radio workers that collaborate in this project.

If this is the way in which the municipal police intend to proceed, a strategy of intimidating us, we say that they will not be able to do so. The work that is being carried out in the Community Radio Ñuu Dee has the firm purpose to continue supporting the most vulnerable sectors of this municipality.

Our work can be documented in photos and videos of all of the events and campaigns that we have undertaken throughout our seven months. What we seek is to be a different option carried out through community work to support local artists and new talent, mental, physical and sexual health programs, legal advice and many other activities that are brought to the community in an altruistic manner.

We ask the social organizations, the independent and community media, the educational institutions and people of good heart that they closely follow these acts of intimidation of the Community Radio Ñuu Dee.

They will not intimidate us, the radio continues!

Community Radio Ñuu Dee
“You Are You, I am Me, We are Everyone”

Calle Laguna Tecomates No. 3 Colonia Reforma.
Huajuapan de León, Oaxaca
Frequency 96.9 FM
http://radionuudee.radiostream321.com