Family members, consisting of Brad’s parents and his brother and sister, will visit Mexico City and Oaxaca City. They will meet with human rights and other non-governmental organizations, Mexican officials, the United States Embassy, eyewitnesses, and the media. Press conferences will be held in each city.

Brad Will was shot and killed in Santa Lucia del Camino on October 27, 2006. Brad had been covering the then 4-month long conflict between the state government and a coalition of organizations and unions pulled together in the Oaxaca People’s Popular Assembly (APPO) to protest Governor Ulises Ruiz’s use of excessive force against the Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers on June 14, 2006.

Beginning in August, armed para-police units linked to both local and state police forces began opening fire on protesters. By October 27, para-police units had killed at least 10 protesters. During this time federal and state prosecutors did not open investigations into these crimes. On October 27, members of the Santa Lucia del Camino police and local government officials were photographed shooting at APPO protesters where Brad was shot. The national press published these photographs. However, state and federal prosecutors have declined to investigate possible government involvement in Brad’s murder, instead pursuing a speculative theory that members of APPO murdered Brad.

Family members are traveling to Mexico to demand a new rigorous and impartial investigation of Brad’s murder. “The cycle of impunity related to crimes against journalists and human rights violations in Mexico must end,” said Craig Will, Brad’s older brother. “It is our hope that this upcoming visit will increase the spotlight on the inadequacies of the Mexican judicial system and
encourage responsible leadership on the part of the state and federal governments to pursue real justice.”

Media interested in attending either press event should contact the Will family’s coadyuvante, Miguel Angel de los Santos at mdelossantos@laneta.apc.org or 52-967-678-8440.

Family Contact:

www.bradwill.org

willcomm@aol.com

Media Events:

The Mexico City press conference will be held a media non-profit, CENCOS, at 10am on Friday, March 23:

Medellin 33, col. Roma
CP 06700, México, D.F., México
Tel: 55 33 64 75 / 76 Fax: 52 08 20 62 cencos@prodigy.net.mx

The Oaxaca City press conference will be held at a graphic arts non-profit, IAGO, on Thursday, March 22 at 2pm:

INSTITUTO DE ARTES GRÁFICAS DE OAXACA
Macedonio Alcalá 507, Centro, Oaxaca C. P. 68000

Tel. (9) 516 20 45 fax (9) 516 69 80

MEXICO CITY, March 15 (Reuters) – The Mexican government was an accomplice in the killing of 20 people in last year’s conflict in the tourist city of Oaxaca and permitted torture and illegal arrests, a rights watchdog said on Thursday.

In a report on the conflict in which leftist activists tried to bring down Oaxaca’s governor, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission said federal, state and municipal officials were responsible for human rights violations.

“Authorities and public officials … either by action or omission caused rights violations,” including the right to life of 20 people, Jose Luis Soberanes, head of the autonomous state agency, said on presenting the report to the Senate’s rights commission.

During the six-month conflict in the city, famed for its colonial architecture, exotic food and indigenous culture, protesters set up hundreds of barricades and chased police from the downtown area to try to oust state Gov. Ulises Ruiz.

In response, death squad-style groups, including men identified by local media as police officers, toured the city at night shooting at protesters.

The clashes escalated, leading to the fatal shooting of a U.S activist journalist and the occupation of the city by federal riot police. Police finally regained control of the city after fierce street battles and massive arrests.

Soberanes, Mexico’s highest rights official, said police used excessive force, threats, illegal arrests and torture to take back the city from protesters, and blamed the government for badly managing the crisis.

Sen. Alejandro Gonzalez, a member of President Felipe Calderon’s National Action Party (PAN), told Reuters lawmakers were awaiting the results of the government’s own internal investigation, which he hoped to see before the end of 2007.

“If the investigation reflects the issues raised in the National Human Rights Commission’s report, we must take action. We don’t want more impunity,” Gonzalez said.

The watchdog recognized that the protesters, who accuse Gov. Ruiz of stealing an election, corruption and heavy-handedness, had also exceeded their right to legitimate protest in some cases.

Soberanes warned the conflict had not been resolved and could flare up again if social, economic and political issues were not resolved in the state, one of the poorest in Mexico.

MEXICO:
Community Radio Stations Under Fire
Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Feb 2 (IPS) – One of the 12 community radio stations operating legally in Mexico has literally come under fire, and its journalists have received death threats and been arrested; another has received warnings for covering the activities of social movements; and a third was closed down at gunpoint by supporters of the local government.

All three cases have been reported to the authorities. The first case, involving the Calenda station in the southern state of Oaxaca, reached the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Thursday, through a complaint filed by the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC).

Aleida Calleja, who represents AMARC in Mexico, told IPS that the three radio stations, which have limited broadcasting reach and do not respond to commercial interests, are in need of protection.

“Freedom of speech is at stake here,” she said.

In January, the mayor of the town of San Antonino Castillo de Velasco, who was overthrown by protests, “opened fire on one of my colleagues, although he missed; another almost lost an eye when stones were thrown at him; and I was arrested and received death threats, and was later forced to sign a document in which I promised not to support subversive activities,” Darío Campos, a volunteer reporter at the Calenda station, told IPS.

Since mid-2006, the station, which broadcasts in San Antonino, a town of 4,900 near Oaxaca, the state capital, has been the target of the rage of the town’s former mayor, who belongs to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has governed the state since 1929.

“For giving coverage to the social uprising and airspace to APPO (the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca), which here in our community toppled the mayor, our radio station and its staff (of 10) have been attacked,” Campos said by telephone from San Antonino.

In the capital of Oaxaca and several neighbouring towns like Antonino, APPO led a months-long uprising last year against Governor Ulises Ruiz, of the PRI, demanding that he resign or be removed for corruption and for violently squashing dissent.

Along with neighbouring states Chiapas and Guerrero, Oaxaca is one of the poorest states in this country of 104 million. In Oaxaca, 80 percent of the population lacks basic sanitation services, street lighting, piped water and paved streets, according to the Oaxacan Human Rights Network.

The conflict began in June, when APPO, an umbrella group made up of more than 300 social organisations, took shape and its members occupied the centre of the city of Oaxaca.

But thousands of federal police were deployed to the area to break up the protests and seize control of the city in late October, and dozens of activists were arrested. Human rights groups reported numerous human rights abuses.

During the months of protests, around 20 people, mainly demonstrators, were killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on the protesters. One of those killed was a U.S. journalist.

“We merely give support to the community, which includes providing information and supporting efforts in health, community organisation and other areas,” said Campos, a 25-year-old economics student.

Neither Campos nor most of his colleagues receive any pay for their volunteer work at the radio station.

Community radio stations generally enjoy broad local support for the services they offer their communities, such as educational programming, coverage on human rights and health questions, or information and warnings on dangers like natural disasters. In addition, they often broadcast in local dialects, such as indigenous tongues in Mexico.

The AMARC complaint states that the Calenda station is facing threats aimed at “silencing it.”

The complaint filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is aimed at getting the regional body to order the Mexican state to take the necessary measures to safeguard the life and physical integrity of the radio station’s members, and to guarantee their right to freedom of expression.

Calleja said the Nandia indigenous radio station, which operated in a Mazateca community in the state of Oaxaca, had also suffered reprisals at the hands of PRI supporters during the APPO uprising.

“Nandia was shut down at gunpoint last year and remains closed despite the complaints that we have filed,” said Calleja.

Another community station that has had problems is the La Voladora station in Amecameca, a mountainous area in the state of Mexico, near the capital.

The station’s staff members have been the targets of death threats and verbal attacks because of their reporting on the indigenous Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and other social movements.

Of the more than 130 radio stations in Mexico that describe themselves as community stations, only 12 — the ones that are backed by AMARC — have licences to operate. The rest, which include stations run by church groups or trade unions, face a permanent risk of being closed down.

Although the National Chamber of the Radio and Television Industry accuses community radio stations of fomenting piracy and encouraging guerrilla groups like the EZLN, the government of conservative former President Vicente Fox, whose six-year term ended in December, granted operating licences to 12 stations in 2004 and 2005.

The permits, which the local branch of AMARC had been demanding since the 1990s, were issued in a vaguely defined legal framework that gives the state enormous discretionary power over community stations.

AMARC is an international non-governmental organisation serving the community radio movement, with associates in 110 countries. Its goal is “to support and contribute to the development of community and participatory radio along the principles of solidarity and international cooperation.” (END/2007)