Mexico City | Desinformémonos. The Judiciary of the State of Chiapas sentenced to 25 years in prison the Tseltal defenders Manuel Sántiz Cruz, Juan Velasco Aguilar, Agustín Pérez Velasco, Martín Pérez Domínguez and Agustín Pérez Domínguez, who were arbitrarily detained for defending their territory in 2022.
The sentence was issued by the Chiapas judge despite the fact that last May 3 three of the five Tseltales declared that, after their arbitrary detention at the hands of the San Juan Cancuc municipal police, the National Guard and the army on May 29, 2022, they were handed over to the Indigenous Justice Prosecutor’s Office, “who first fabricated the crime of drug possession and then involved them in the homicide for which they were sentenced,” explained the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba).
The other two indigenous people sentenced declared that they were arbitrarily detained by elements of the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection and the Specialized Police on June 1, 2022, outside the State Center for Social Reinsertion of Sentenced Persons No. 5 (CERSS No. 5) in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, when they were visiting their companions and in retaliation for having been witnesses to the operation and arbitrary deprivation of liberty.
“None of these arbitrary elements were taken into account, so that once again they give evidence of the recurrent action of criminalization towards the native peoples who defend the territory,” said the Frayba.
The Center criticized that the trial used “criteria from more than thirty years ago” and gave evidentiary value to the declarations of the municipal police, “when they should have been the first to be investigated”, since the death of which the Tseltales were accused “took place in the patrol car of the municipal police of San Juan Cancuc”. Another notorious fact, added Frayba, was that the judge “gave value to an altered death certificate”.
“This case is part of a pattern of complicity that exists between municipal, state and federal authorities, along with judges and prosecutors to generate the factory of guilty and keep innocent people in prison, so the lack of access to justice is a burden of the Mexican legal system,” said the Center.
Frayba demanded freedom and justice for the five Tseltales of San Juan Cancuc, since it is fully documented “the existence of serious human rights violations, among them the due process of law, noting the ineffectiveness of the investigations of the State Attorney General’s Office, which are devoid of legal value, in addition to the partiality of the Judiciary that acted ignoring the clear evidence of the arbitrary deprivation of liberty to which the five defenders of the territory were subjected”.
Below is the full press release:
From Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center, we denounce the criminalization of territorial defenders; the Chiapas government once again acts with impunity. Today, May 17, 2023, the Judicial Power of the State of Chiapas found Manuel Sántiz Cruz, Juan Velasco Aguilar, Agustín Pérez Velasco, Martín Pérez Domínguez and Agustín Pérez Domínguez, five indigenous community defenders of the Maya Tseltal people of San Juan Cancuc, arbitrarily deprived of their freedom for defending their territory, guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison for a crime they did not commit.
To establish the sentence, the judge used legal criteria from 1993, that is to say, criteria from more than thirty years ago, in spite of all the legal reforms that have occurred in Mexico that should guarantee human rights. The judge gave evidentiary value to the declarations of the municipal police, when they should have been the first to be investigated, since the death occurred in the patrol car of the municipal police of San Juan Cancuc; another well-known fact was that the judge gave validity to an altered death certificate.
On May 3, 2023, the five indigenous Tseltales gave their statement before the Judge, where they mentioned that three of them were arbitrarily detained on May 29, 2022, in San Juan Cancuc, by means of a joint operation of the Municipal Police, the National Guard and the Mexican Army, to later be handed over to the Indigenous Justice Prosecutor, who first fabricated the crime of drug possession and later involved them in the homicide they were sentenced for.
The latter two stated that they were arbitrarily detained by elements of the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection and the Specialized Police on June 1, 2022, outside the State Center for Social Reinsertion of Sentenced Persons No. 5 (CERSS No. 5) in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, while they were visiting their companions, and in reprisal for having witnessed the operation and arbitrary deprivation of liberty carried out by the Security Forces on May 29, 2022 of that same year. None of these arbitrary elements were taken into account, which once again gives evidence of the recurrent act of criminalization of indigenous peoples who defend their territory.
This case is part of a pattern of complicity that exists between municipal, state and federal authorities, along with judges and prosecutors to generate the factory of guilty and keep innocent people in prison, so that the lack of access to justice is a burden of the Mexican legal system.
Frayba demands freedom and justice for the five indigenous Tseltales of San Juan Cancuc, since we have fully documented the existence of serious human rights violations, among them the due process of law, noting the ineffectiveness of the investigations of the State Attorney General’s Office, which are devoid of legal value, in addition to the partiality of the Judiciary that acted ignoring the clear evidence of the arbitrary deprivation of liberty to which the five defenders of the territory were subjected. Finally, we refer to the arguments of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which mentions that widespread or systematic imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty in violation of the norms of international law can constitute crimes against humanity.1 The following is a summary of the arguments of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
Original article published in Desinformemonos on May 18th, 2023. https://desinformemonos.org/condenan-a-25-anos-de-prision-a-cinco-defensores-tseltales-en-chiapas/ English translation by Schools for Chiapas.
Footnotes
- Opinion number 43/2021 of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations Human Rights Council, adopted on September 10, 2021, concerning Adrián Gómez, Germán López, Abrahám López, Juan de la Cruz and Marcelino Ruiz (Mexico). https://www.dof.gob.mx/nota_detalle.php?codigo=5647086&fecha=29/03/2022#gsc.tab=0