The now infamous date of October 7th was marked in Sendas, where the Palestine Action Chiapas group erected an altar to remember the 42,000 Palestinians that have been murdered in the last year. Members of the public brought flowers and candles to show their solidarity. A text was read from a 24-year-old woman from Gaza in which she questioned the inaction of world governments and international organizations and asked if Palestinians are somehow less human and undeserving of peace, immediate intervention and humanitarian aid.
The event marked the culmination of a week of activities in response to a call from Palestinian civil society organizations for a week of global action. This included two other events in Sendas; the launch in Chiapas of a national petition to collect 130,000 signatures to pressure the Mexican government to break diplomatic and economic ties with Israel, and the showing of the film “Gaza” (2019).
On Sunday, October 6th, Palestine Action Chiapas held a die-in in one of the main squares of the town.
Schools for Chiapas.
The following report was published in La Jornada:
Protest in San Cristobal against “Israeli Genocide in Gaza”
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas. More than 20 people belonging to the group called Palestine Action Chiapas (Acción Palestina Chiapas), held a demonstration on Sunday in San Cristóbal to protest against “the genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza.”
The protesters, who gathered in the central park, in front of the old municipal palace, now the San Cristóbal Museum, stated that “we are here to express our indignation at the genocide that is underway in Gaza, to make visible the war crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces and to show our solidarity with the people of Palestine.”
They added: “We do so in response to the call of the Palestinian people for a week of global solidarity action to commemorate the first anniversary of this phase of the genocide. We do so in the context of the growing Zionist aggression in the Gaza Strip, in the West Bank and now also in Yemen, Syria and especially Lebanon.”
As part of the protest, the demonstrators, most of whom were from other countries, participated in a bombing simulation, where they threw themselves to the ground in a die-in, while dozens of bystanders watched.
In a statement, they said that “the genocide and ethnic cleansing that are occurring in Gaza are now receiving less media coverage, due to the situation in Lebanon and Iran, but they continue with more brutality than ever.”
Palestine Action Chiapas reiterated that “it is important that we continue our efforts to ensure that history does not repeat itself in Lebanon,” while stating that “we commemorate this anniversary peacefully while Israel commemorates it more aggressively; this time with an invasion of Lebanon, where it has already killed more than 2,000 people and displaced a million, repeating the same barbaric strategies that they have employed in Gaza for twelve months.”
Original article by Elio Henríquez, La Jornada, October 6th, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.