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Today, Friday November 24, 2006, the president of the Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights (LIMEDDH), Lic. Yésica Sánchez Maya, denounced and repudiated the gross violations of human rights that are being committed by the Federal Government in the state of Oaxaca.
On November 20th, 21-year old Eliud Amni Martínez Sánchez was detained while passing through Oaxaca City’s center to buy school supplies for his sisters. That same day 7 people were detained, some of whom have nothing to do with the movement and even U.S. tourist, and taken to the jail in Tlacolula, where the LIMEDDH confirmed that these 7 were victims of excessive physical attacks. The most grave of these cases was that of Eliud, who was found with a series of grave lesions resulting from his torture. A wounded Eliud said that as he was grabbed by the PFP, he was tied up with his own belt and subsequently kicked and beaten with clubs. Thanks to the immediate response of his mother, he was attended to by a general physician who recommended that he be immediately moved to a hospital. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until yesterday, the 23rd, at 5 p.m. that he was finally moved to the IMSS medical center. At the request of Eliud and his family, we are making these facts public along with the pictures that attribute to this violence.
Eliud, a student at the Technological Institute, was detained at the corner of Matamoros and García Vigil streets. He states that he was beaten by 15 police officers that accused him of throwing molotov cocktails in the previous day’s confrontations. He further denounces that he was interrogated for his supposed political association, they asked him in which barricade he was participating, who was the woman who blows the warning whistle there and who was responsible for ringing the bells to call out to those at the barricade. He was beaten for an hour and 45 minutes, all of which he attributes to his looks and his long hair.
The case of Eliud is not isolated, but rather is further proof of the brutality that is being reported in almost all of the 114 cases of detentions by police and paramilitaries, in what is a systemic campaign of repression against the movement. The majority of those detained have already been released, but at least 17 are still being held in addition to the list of 28 confirmed disappearances. These aggressions have increased in the past weeks, confirming that rather than bring ‘peace’ and ‘order’, the presence of the PFP has only exacerbated repression by thugs, paramilitaries and the police themselves, against this movement in Oaxaca.
