Oaxaca, Mexico: Anti-Capitalist Groups Occupy Office

To the honest media

To the human rights organizations

To the people and communities of Oaxaca

After seven months of the current Oaxacan state governmental administration, women, men, youth and children of the organizations that make up the Bloque Anticapitalista (Anti-capitalist Bloc): Consejo Indígena Popular de Oaxaca “Ricardo Flores Magón” (CIPO-RFM), Frente de Izquierda Revolucionaria (FIR), Unión de Pueblos Originarios (UPO), Unión Cívica Democrática de Barrios Colonias y Comunidades (UCIDEBACC), and la Unión de Artesanos y Comerciantes Oaxaqueños en Lucha (UACOL), have had to leave our houses and our communities because justice has not arrived to us. There has been no solution to the demands we’ve made since the first day of this governmental administration lead by Alejandro Mural Honojosa. There has been no solution amidst the indifference and false protection of human rights on part of the Defender of the Human Rights of the People of Oaxaca, lead by Arturo Peimbert Calvo, “defender” of our state.

Considering this, we want to point out that the official state discourse has been characterized by the willingness to dialogue and construct agreements. Thus, in an act of good faith and credibility, our organizations had hoped to resolve the cases justly in this manner. However, we’ve found that the different negotiations we have convoked have been simple means of containment and delay, while the violation of our rights as people continues.

In the case of compañero Librado Baños Rodríguez, a lawyer and human rights defender, his serious health deterioration has been ignored. In spite of the opinion A/HRC/WGAD/2015/19 by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations, asking for his immediate freedom and special medical attention, he continues to suffer the indolence of the state and federal government. Up to this point, they have threatened to suspend medical attention to our compañero and to reenter him into a central prison, without regard to the possibility of that action killing him due to his complicated health.

With respect to the case of compañero Pablo López Alavés, an Indigenous environmental activist, for two years they have failed to fulfill the recommendation 11/2015 from the file DDHPO/1651/(06)/OAX/2014. This recommendation was recently strengthened with the opinion in 23/2017, issued by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations. They have made it clear that the intention of the state tribunals is to not free Pablo in spite of the serious violations of his human rights already well documented in his case.

These two widely documented cases, exemplify the serious human rights violations and the criminalization of social struggle that remains the definite state policy in Oaxaca. Beyond the discourses that repeat until exhaustion how work will be done to solve the serious problems of previous administrations, the sad reality is that those words are lost in the tangled mess of offices of functionaries. These functionaries act bureaucratically contrary to the work of the governor, openly boycotting whatever possible solution and further aggravating the state of things by acting with pride, arrogance and despotism.

In sum, nothing has changed. Worse still, it seems that they only wanted to stall time, while they take power in positions that permit them to continue in the looting and repression of our peoples.

Thus, today our children, youth, women and men have walked beneath the rain from our forgotten communities. We are here to occupy this office where they dispatch those that claim to defend the rights of the people of Oaxaca, but act complacently with the functionaries that violate our human rights and omit their recommendations. We declare that we will remain here until the “defender” Arturo Peimber, who passes through the offices of Washington giving speeches about how to defend rights in our state, has the dignity to come and give concrete responses to our demands for justice.

We demand that the government give an immediate solution to these problems that only contribute to more instability and distress for our people. We demand the abandonment of the route of criminal indifference, as well as an end to the intent to continue deceiving us with infinite dialogue that does not solve anything.

Bloque de Organizations Sociales Anticapitalista (Bloc of Anti-capitalist Social Organizations)

CIPO-RFM, FIR, UPO, UCCIDEBAC, UACOL

Oaxaca de Juárez, Oaxaca

July 10^th, 2017