An Acteal Fact Sheet
An Acteal fact sheet
- on December 22nd, 1997, paramilitaries that had been trained by the Mexican Army to carry on a war of low intensity against the Zapatistas, massacred 45 persons in Acteal, in the municipality of Chenalhó in the highlands of Chiapas, southern Mexico.
- Those massacred were 21 women (4 of them pregnant), 15 children and five men. They belonged to the Abejas, a pacifist organization that shared the social justice goals of the Zapatistas and sat with them at the peace talks in San Andres. They were carrying on a 3 day fast and prayer for peace at Acteal, where they had fled after being driven from their homes in diverse communities.
- After the Zapatistas had declared an autonomous community in Polhó in 1995 the government armed paramilitaries, who began persecuting Zapatistas in the communities, burning or sacking their homes and in some cases killing. 23 persons were killed in incidents leading up to Acteal.
- The Abejas were targeted because they refused to take part in the persecution of the Zapatistas. Their houses too were burned and sacked.
- During the massacre, the military was stationed at less than 200meters from the scene while killings with high caliber weapons went on over a period of 6 hours. When church authorities in San Cristóbal phoned the capital to demand intervention they were told that nothing was going on.
- Padre Miguel (for 33 years the cure of Chenalhó) on national television on February 24, 1998: “It is a plan of the government to end the bases of support of the Zapatistas.” He was expelled from the country 3 days later.
- When the world reacted in horror to the massacre, the government tried and imprisoned 86 Tzotzils, 6 public security officers and 1 low ranking military. The government tried to portray the massacre as the result of religious disputes.
- The high ranking intellectual authors in the government and military were never investigated or prosecuted.
- On July 12th, 2009, the Supreme Court of Mexico ordered 20 of the convicted persons released and 6 retried on the basis that the investigation was flawed with manufactured evidence and lack of translation for the accused. An additional 31 that minister Valls had refused to sign off on were to be reviewed again for possible release.
- The Supreme Court has never ordered any prisoners from the left released (for instance from Otenco and Oaxaca) though their investigations were equally flawed as are all Mexican investigations.
- Abejas have testified and identified the imprisoned persons. They now fear reprisals and a flair up of paramilitary activity in the highlands where the paramilitaries, who never disarmed, will feel a sense of impunity.
- On the 20th of August, 2009 The National Security Archive published papers obtained from the U.S. government which indicated that the Mexican army had created in 1994 a clandestine network of army personnel that provided “training and protection from arrests” to anti-Zapatista groups in the region. The Mexican government and army have long denied such involvement.
- On November 5, 2009 the Supreme Court of Mexico ordered 9 more of those convicted released on the basis of flawed investigations. It ordered another 16 to be on government protection with evidence to be reconsidered excluding the evidence considered tainted and excluding the charges of carrying weapons permitted to only the army.
- The governor of Chiapas is trying to prevent the return of the released to Chiapas by arranging out of state settlement for them.
- Amnesty International is demanding new trials and protection for the victims.
- the Abejas carry on with renewed fervor and renewed international support their demand that the CIDH (the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) of the OAS open hearings on Acteal, now that no one can doubt that impunity for human rights violators is the rule in Mexico.
- On November 5, the Center for Human Rights Fray Bartolomé de las Casas urged the CIDH to take up the Abejas’ case.