For Immediate Release: January 11, 1994
For Further Information: Tom Goldtooth or
Joe Mayokok (218)751-4967
Jackie Warledo (918)743-6530
Caren Trujillo (303)554-2122
ALLIANCE OF INDIGENOUS GROUPS CALL FOR A HALT OF MEXICAN POLICE
AND MILITARY OPERATIONS IN CHIAPAS, MEXICO AND TO IMMEDIATELY
ADDRESS VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES.
The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) calls upon the Mexican government
to immediately halt further Mexican police and military operations against
the Mexican peasants and indigenous people and to initiate humane steps to
promote peaceful resolutions of the conflict in Chiapas. Mexican Presidente
Salinas de Gotari and the army must not take reprisals against indigenous
people and must provide due process for those charged with offenses against
the national state of Mexico.
IEN is a North American alliance of indigenous people, groups, and traditional
societies organized to defend our inherent rights to self-determination on
our lives. We stand in solidarity and in defense with the struggle for
fundamental principles of self-determination and justice of the indigenous
people of Mexico and throughout the western hemisphere.
IEN has documentation of the long and recent history of horrifying
mistreatment.unwarranted arrests, cruelty, and torture by the army, police and
government
officials against the local indigenous population of Chiapas. In addition,
local church officials have been intimidated by the Mexican governmental
officials for supporting the empowerment of the local indigenous people.
The indigenous population of Chiapas have been demanding the right to
participate as equal partners with the Mexican government towards the
planning for their economic, cultural, and political survival.
Last year, IEN issued a national statement of opposition to the North
American Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA) forseeing that implementation of NAFTA
by the tri-national governments of Mexico, United States, and Canada would
negatively impact indigenous populations of those countries. The indigenous
populations of those countries. The indigenous people of Chiapas had selected
Mexico's implementation of NAFTA to bring attention to further fragmentation
of the indigenous pueblos by privatization of communal lands. In Mexico,
indigenous people do not have land reserves compared to United States and
Canadahowever, live under the ejido system of collective land holdings
supposedly
establish through the constitution of the Mexican government. These land
rights are being jeopardized with commercial market pressures being prompted
by NAFTA and the free market value system. Indigenous people of Chiapas are
becoming refugees in their own land.
Under NAFTA negotiations, governmental officials made assurances that NAFTA
would provide the United States with extra leverage to urge and insist that
Mexican governmental authorities correct the reported human rights abuses.
It is the long history of Mexican governmental neglect to adequately address
these abuses that led to the recent decision of indigenous people to defend
their lands and lives.
We call upon the government of the United States to hold congressional
hearings in the Human Rights Commission of the United States Congress on the
issue of culpability the United States would have as accomplice to violation
of the right to development of the indigenous people of Mexico under NAFTA.
We further call for the United Nations Human Rights Commission to address
this year's session in March 1994 as a threat to world peace, and a
continuing violation of the human rights of indigenous people which should
be protected by the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Finally, we call on all indigenous nations, communities, traditional societies.
organizations, human rights groups, social, economic and environmental
justice groups and the world community to actively promote the peaceful
resolution of the situation in Chiapas by maintaining a vigilance of Human
Rights and supporting the attempts of Mexico's indigenous population to
secure their political, economic, and cultural liberation that has been denied
for 501 years of colonization and oppression.
NATIONAL IEN OFFICE (218) 751-4957 FAX (218)751-0561
INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK
P.O.BOX 485
Bemidji, Minnesota 56601
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"When we walk upon Mother Earth, we always plant our feet carefully
because we know the faces of our future generations are looking
up at us from beneath the ground. We never forget them."
-Oren Lyons, Onondaga Nation
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milo@scicom.alphacdc.com Michele Lord Alpha Institute
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