Call to free Mexican volunteer

CAFOD partner Fomento works with indigenous communities, providing training in human rights, health and agriculture. [Marcella Haddad]

CAFOD is asking its supporters to join the urgent campaign to release Diego Meneses, a volunteer working with our Mexican partner Fomento, who has been unjustly accused of murder

Diego Meneses, a catechist and health promotor, rushed in to help survivors of a murderous attack in a village near his home in Chiapas, Mexico.

The attack by armed individuals on the community of Viejo Velasco Suarez on 13 November 2006 left four dead. Four other people are still missing.

Amnesty International reports that Diego, a father of five, was initially detained purely as a witness, but was then charged with murder.

Father Gerónimo Hernández, CAFOD’s local partner in the region, states: “I have known Diego for more than 20 years and have no doubt at all that he is absolutely innocent.

“He is a catechist working in our area, the Chiapas jungle. He is also a health promoter and community leader who is in danger of being sentenced to many years of prison if we don’t do anything to free him.

“Out of the compassion of his heart, he went to help a neighbouring community, where the previous day several people had been massacred in an irrational and disproportionate attack. But the police detained him, and the government is using him as a scapegoat.”

Growing campaign

Although his native language is Ch’ol, Diego’s lawyers claim the authorities refused to let him speak through an interpreter.

Diego gave his evidence in Spanish but, unable to understand the transcript of his testimony in Spanish, he refused to sign the written version.

According to reports by Amnesty he was beaten severely and a judge then ordered him to be held in pre-charge detention for 90 days while the prosecutor gathered testimonies to charge him with the killings.

He has now been formally charged with murder, and with belonging to a criminal organisation. This is despite his lawyers’ statement that forensic evidence shows he had not fired a gun on the day of the attack, and that prosecution statements made by the only two inhabitants of Viejo Velasco Suarez willing to testify were inaccurately recorded by the interpreter.

Fomento has joined the growing campaign for his unconditional release. They have sent out an appeal stating Diego has been charged with the murder of the people he had “in fact gone out to help”.

It goes on to state that: “The Judge made this decision without taking into consideration the testimonies of the people who were accompanying him and without considering the evidence that proved Diego’s innocence.”

According to Amnesty, many of the individuals who carried out the attack were reportedly wearing clothing used by state police and were armed with machetes and high-calibre firearms.

Why is there fighting in the area?

Conflict is focused on the ownership of land and forests. People were pushed out of the North of Chiapas to the Lacandón jungle in the South in the 1970s to make way for large farms.

Land disputes resulting from this time still have not been fully resolved and the area has become increasingly militarised. Communities are suffering repression by the army, police and paramilitary forces. The case of Diego is just one example of the many human rights abuses in the South of Mexico.

Despite an agreement to regularise land rights of 28 communities including Viejo Velasco Suarez in the Selva Lacandona, since April 2006 pro-government groups and communities have carried out illegal evictions.

Clare Dixon, CAFOD’s Head of Latin America and Caribbean Section says: “CAFOD has been proud to be associated with the work of Fomento with some of the most impoverished indigenous people of Mexico for more than twenty years.

“The church in Chiapas has often been attacked and vilified by the powers-that-be for its defence of the rights of the indigenous communities, including church leaders such as Bishop Samuel Ruiz who suffered kidnappings and death threats, down to the most humble church catechists such as Diego.”

CAFOD will continue to closely monitor the situation and human rights issues generally in the region.

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