Help us send emails ASAP by Wednesday to demand the immediate release of José Diaz!
Compañeras, compañeros y compañerxs, we write to you today with an URGENT REQUEST from Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center, to join in a timely email campaign to demand the release of José Díaz.
Unjustly detained for a year and 7 months, José Díaz, Zapatista support base has been held hostage by the state in inhumane conditions, with regular delays to his hearings and without access to a translator. You can read the most recent newsletter from Frayba below.
It is urgent thay we all send and forward emails of political pressure. Please send them as soon as possible today, Monday, July 1, Tuesday, July 2 and Wednesday, July 3, as soon as we can… (note and letter templates from Frayba follow)
Dear compas,
We inform you that on July 1, 2024, at 3:30 p.m., José Diaz’s fifth hearing will take place, so we need to put more pressure on the president of the Court of Judicial Power and the Judge of the case as they will make the closing arguments and decisions for him to be released or sentenced.
Let’s put pressure on the bad government that holds our compa José Diaz hostage, until we tear down the walls of extermination.
We thank you in advance for your great heart of solidarity, for your fight and rebellion.
Thank you!!! 
Please call for others to send emails.
Copy and paste the message recipients, bcc and subject from the boxes above. Then copy the text of the letters, adding relevant information where the parentheses are.
Don’t forget to blind copy us to international@frayba.org.mx. If you can, please also bcc: info@schoolsforchiapas.org. Thank you for your solidarity!!!
Letter No. 1, to Poder Judicial
Letter No. 2 to the Judge
We demand immediate freedom for José Díaz Gómez BAEZLN and the defenders of San Juan Cancuc, who are being held by the State in places of extermination.
Mexico City
June 24, 2024
Bulletin no. 14
- We demand immediate freedom for José Díaz Gómez BAEZLN who is being held hostage by the Mexican government.
- We demand immediate freedom for the defenders of San Juan Cancuc who the State obstinately keeps in prison for crimes they did not commit.
- Freedom for all political prisoners of the Mexican State who are in places of extermination.
We find ourselves in the midst of a proliferation and obscurity of armed groups that use violence for social, political, economic and territorial control, marked by the continuity of a repressive strategy that criminalizes people and peoples who are living their autonomy and defending life in the face of a deaf government that does not listen to social demands and demands for justice.
We are in a constant increase of violence similar to a black hole that does not get touched, and where it has left serious traces of human rights violations, among which stand out situations of forced displacement, disappearances, assassinations, torture, attacks on autonomy and arbitrary deprivations of liberty.
In Chiapas, since 2016 the accusatory criminal system was implemented, throughout this period we have documented a pattern of fabrication of culprits, where with set-ups, and torture, they invent crimes against people (young people, indigenous people, defenders), seeking to feign governability and good functioning of the bodies of procurement and administration of justice.
The fabrication of culprits as a pattern of indictment and arbitrary detention of innocent people can occur in an isolated manner, but it is also used as a form of repression criminalizing human rights defenders.
José Díaz Gómez, Support Base of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, indigenous Cho’l and campesino, 45 years old, prisoner of the Government of the state of Chiapas, has been held hostage since November 25, 2022, in the State Center for Social Reinsertion of Sentenced Persons CERSS No. 17 “El Bambú”, in Catazajá, Chiapas, for the crime of robbery executed with violence.
José Díaz faces a criminalization process by the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Chiapas. In addition, there are arrest warrants against four other EZLN Support Bases. The accusation is based on a pattern of fabrication of culprits and criminalization by the Prosecutor’s Office, it should be noted that all the evidence presented by the Prosecutor’s Office does not link responsibility.
The trial of José Díaz in pre-trial detention has been prolonged to more than one year and seven months. The lack of substantive and objective evidence has led to a coordinated simulation to keep him deprived of his liberty. In addition, the Mexican State has not taken adequate measures to ensure that he always has access to translators and interpreters of his mother tongue. The lack of access to a translator in his mother tongue constitutes serious violations of his human rights. The failure to provide him with an interpreter in his mother tongue during the criminal proceedings not only contravenes international human rights standards, but also impedes his ability to properly understand the charges against him and to participate effectively in his own defense.
Arbitrary detention is interpreted as an act of repression because of his indigenous identity and his participation in social movements such as BAEZLN. This type of criminalization not only affects defenders like José Díaz on a personal level, but also has a negative impact on his entire community and the defense of their collective rights.
In this same context of arbitrary detention are our fellow territorial defenders such as the compañeros from San Juan Cancuc, imprisoned in CERSS no. 5 in San Cristobal de Las Casas, who are also being repressed for defending their rights as indigenous peoples, have been subjected to flawed trials and with a state consigned action to keep them in the dungeons of State extermination.
Likewise, there are other prisoners who suffer this inhumanity that reflects mechanisms of torture and extermination, among them is the young university student Jonny Ronay, unjustly imprisoned in CERSS no. 15 in Copainalá.
These actions not only violate the fundamental right to due process and adequate defense, but also reflect a pattern of systematic discrimination against indigenous communities, who frequently face barriers in the judicial system that limit their access to justice, a State violence where torture continues as an internalized practice in judicial processes, which forms a criminal violence from the government apparatus, especially in the state of Chiapas.
That is why we call on all compañeros and compañeras to join the days for the freedom of the prisoners criminalized and repressed by the Mexican State, to express ourselves and intensify the demands for freedom, until we extract from the clutches of the bad governments, from these places of torture and social extermination all our compañeros and compañeras, who are part of the peoples and communities that we are, and who are needed to continue in the processes of struggle and resistance for the protection of territory and life.
Original text by Frayba Center for Human Rights on July 24th, 2024.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.