Amnesty International Concerned as Detentions Continue in Oaxaca

International human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) issued a press release last Tuesday concerned about the state of the people detained since the federal forces entered Oaxaca City on October 29th. “The lack of official information about the detained, their physical condition, and what exactly they are charged with could mean that not only are they unable to communicate with anyone, but also that they are subject to mistreatment, which would constitute serious human rights violations,”AI stated.

Even as the Federal Preventative Police (FPP) have temporarily suspended their activities with hopes of negotiations between the APPO and the federal government, detentions continue. The Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights (Limeddh by their initials in Spanish) reports that between Tuesday and Wednesday alone 19 people were detained by municipal police, all APPO sympathizers, bringing the overall list of people apprehended to over 100, although 52 thus far have been released. According to the Limeddh, many of the released show signs of mistreatment. They highlighted the case of the lawyer Gerardo Jimenez Vazquez, who suffered two broken ribs, as one of the worst. On top of this, many think that the federal forces are moving into phase III of the operation as last Tuesday orders to apprehend 9 of the 200 with arrest warrants went into effect. Up to this point agents of the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) have been unsuccessful in arresting any of these nine people. Four leaders of the APPO on this list asked for and were granted refuge by the archdiocese of Oaxaca in a local church. Alternative Nobel Peace Prize winner Paraguyan Martin Almada said there were similarities between the police actions in Oaxaca and the “horrors of Operacion Condor” in South America where opposition was kidnapped, tortured, and assassinated during the 1970s. In this context, negotiations between the APPO and the federal government continue to stall.

At the same time since the clash between the FPP and the APPO on November 2nd, there have been no helicopter over flights, no attempts to remove any more barricades, and very little patrolling on the city streets by police. Many city busses are running, most shops are opening, even the Oaxaca city orchestra gave a small concert in a public park, El Llano, giving creed to federal government official Arturo Chavez’s statement that things are returning to normal. “You could even see last weekend that many young kids were going to the discotheques,” Chavez told reporters. If you were to ignore the Zocalo, where now FPP agents are searching through people’s bags when they enter, or other parts of the city where the FPP is concentrated, you could feasibly convince yourself this was true.

Maybe emblematic of this intense duality of both incredibly heightened and no police presence was that a Death Metal band was able to set up amplifiers and blast out an impromptu concert in front of several swanky restaurants on the tourist pedestrian walkway Macedonia Alcala, a mere block from the police lines. Outside FPP lines there is an absence of visible uniformed law enforcement (although allegedly plain clothed undercover police roam everywhere in the city), as has been the case in Oaxaca since last June 14th, when neighborhoods started to make crime watch committees. Five months ago the Death Metal band would have been removed within seconds.