Tag Archives: community police

Freedom for Nestora/Libertad para Nestora Committee’s Letter to Mexican Deputies

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Freedom for Nestora/Libertad para Nestora Committee
5018 Rainier Avenue S., Seattle, Washington 98118, U.S.A.

FreeNestora.org . FreeNestora@gmail.com
March 18, 2014
To the Honorable Deputy Senators Roberto Lopez Suarez, Alejandro Carbajal, Luis Manuel Arias Pallares, Jose Luis Muñoz Soria, Margarita Elena Tapia and Loretta Ortiz Ahft,

The Freedom for Nestora/Libertad para Nestora Committee urges you to take all possible action to help secure the immediate release of Ms. Nestora Salgado. Community leaders in Washington State in collaboration with Ms. Salgado’s family formed the Committee last November and it has since grown into a national and international campaign. Ms. Salgado is a U.S. citizen and a resident of Renton, Washington and there is a growing outcry in this state for her release and dropping the clearly false and politically motivated charges against her.

There have been dozens of radio, TV and newspaper stories about Ms. Salgado in this region of the United States, and the coverage is now spreading nationwide in both the English and Spanish language media. Over 120 organizations and prominent individuals have signed on to support the Campaign to Free Nestora Salgado, including human rights attorneys and organizations, the Washington State Labor Council representing 425,000 affiliated union members, political leaders, Native American indigenous activists, the Seattle Human Rights Commission, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 28 of  Washington, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Committee, and numerous advocacy organizations from around the country. (A list of the endorsers is attached.) In addition, 6,500 people have signed the online petition urging President Barack Obama to intervene on Ms. Salgado’s behalf.

Legal petitions have been filed with the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Resolutions and letters from several organizations have been sent to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry requesting his help obtaining Salgado’s freedom. A multi-city, multinational day of protest and picketing was held on International Human Rights Day, December 10. Protests took place at Mexican consulates in five U.S. cities and government offices in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. There were also other actions in Australia, France and Argentina.
Last week International Women’s Day press conferences, forums and rallies were held in New York City, San Francisco and Seattle, as well as in Mexico, where supporters and family members of Nestora Salgado demanded her release.

The Freedom for Nestora Committee is currently following up with the U.S. Congressional delegation from Washington State in order to insure more aggressive intervention by the U.S. Secretary of State on Ms. Salgado’s behalf.
It is becoming increasing clear to us and to the broader U.S. public that Ms. Salgado is guilty only of trying to help the people of her hometown of Olinalá, where she is a respected community leader. We are also gravely concerned about the fate of Ms. Salgado’s colleagues in the Community Police Force in Guerrero who have been persecuted for carrying out their duties and for protesting Nestora Salgado’s arrest.

We heartened to hear that your esteemed body is investigating Ms. Salgado’s incarceration and mistreatment, and look forward to hearing the results of your inquiry.  If we can provide any more information that would assist your efforts, please contact us at the above address or email.

 

Sincerely,
Su Docekal

Chairperson,

Freedom for Nestora/Libertad para Nestora Committee

Seattle, Washington

The Right to Arm Oneself

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By Cuauhtémoc Ruiz Ortiz, Partido Obrero Socialista, Mexico

The appearance of community police and self defense groups, in eleven states of the country, is one of the more amazing events of recent years in Mexico.

Thousands of people have been obliged to arm and organize themselves against narcos and criminals that extort and abuse them.

The enormous majority of these police and self defense groups are people from humble conditions–peasants, agricultural and farm workers, small and medium sized business people.

Where these community guards have existed they have been successful and considerably lowered criminality.

In Michoacan, the  performance of the self defense groups has been spectacular because in the month of December and the beginning of 2014 they have pursued and driven out the criminals from the cities and towns where they were hidden.

This popular determination to stop the criminals has turned into a energetic, quasi-military campaign with territories that the self defense groups liberate to the joy of the people.

The combatants understand that it is not enough to expel the criminals from their communities and that it is necessary to exterminate them and take them from their hiding places.

In the state of Guerrero, even though it is not so spectacular, the organization of the community police has advanced toward Chilpancingo and has important popular support.

This brave fight of the armed and organized people has highlighted the fact that the false war of (former president) Felipe Calderon against the narcos was a failure.

It was precisely in Michoacan where the then president initiated, in December 2006, the operations that supposedly were fighting against the criminals. Six years later, the Michoacan narcos were more powerful and shameless, and, in the country, were more than 70 thousand cadavers.

Michoacan in 2014 equally demonstrates the failure of the present President Peña Nieto in the matter of security. The leaders of the PRI knew that the narcos were kings in Michoacan but they tolerated and collaborated with them. Only the energetic action of the armed popular movement obliged the intervention of the federal government, more worried because the state government (in charge of the tricolor) was totally losing control before the organized people. Michocan and Guerrrero equally show that the PRD has suffered a strong set back.

In both states,  the yellow party governed  or governs  or (former presidential candidate) Lopez Obrador has a strong influence. The latter on February 10 spoke in defense of the prisoners in Guerrero–six months after they had been imprisoned!–but
not even this for Michoacan.

And never has been heard from the PRD a sympathetic word for the offended people and the important persons of the PRD are suspected of being narcos. The governor of Guerrero, from the PRD, is a ferocious repressor of the communitarios (community police)

WSLC joins campaign to release Renton woman from Mexican prison

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salgado-nestora(Feb. 25, 2014) — At the direction of the Washington State Labor Council’s Executive Board, WSLC President Jeff Johnson has written U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to urge him to press for the release of a Nestora Salgado, a Renton woman who has been imprisoned in Mexico since Aug. 21, 2013.

According to a Seattle Weekly report on her arrest, Salgado, a naturalized U.S. citizen, “got swept up in the movement to fight violence, organized crime and what many believe is government corruption” in Olinalá, the remote, impoverished town where she was born.

Mexico’s federal law, and that of the state of Guerrero, gives indigenous people the right to form their own police force… many such community police forces have sprung up across the country. Olinalá’s even had the backing of Guerrero governor… Salgado, who had started spending months at a time in Olinalá, was elected leader of the that force. The governor might not have anticipated that Olinalá’s militia would arrest the town sheriff. (Sources say) the sheriff had been called upon to investigate the double-homicide of a father and son. Instead, they say, the town official tampered with the evidence at the crime scene and tried to steal the dead men’s belongings, including a cow.

Read more at TheStand.org >>

Solidarity Statement from the Freedom for Nestora – Seattle Committee

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The Freedom for Nestora – Seattle Committee issued a Solidarity Statement on January 17, 2014 to a demonstration in Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero standing with the demonstrators demanding freedom for all political prisoners in Mexico.

Read the statement here.