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Another Forest-Defending Peasant Behind Bars |
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By Diego Cevallos*
Felipe
Arriaga, defender of the forests in the Mexican state of Guerrero,
stands accused of assassination. ''I'm innocent,'' he told Tierramérica
in an interview from his jail cell.
Arriaga is the fifth peasant farmer and anti-logging activist to
be imprisoned since 1999. The other four were released after intense
international campaigns for their rights.
MEXICO CITY - Being a poor farmer and fighting
deforestation in Mexico appear to be sufficient reason to end up
in jail, as suggested by the five such cases here since 1999. The
latest is Felipe Arriaga, arrested in November on a murder charge
-- and he may be joined by 13 more whose charges are pending.
''My problem is because of defending the forests. It's not for nothing
that the man accusing me is a logger,'' Arriaga said in Tierramérica
interview from prison in Guerrero, the southeastern Mexican state
where he worked with the Organization of Ecologist Peasant Farmers
of the Sierra de Petatlán and Coyuca de Catalán.
Arriaga's testimony is practically a copy of those made by four
other environmental activist small farmers, all of whom were poor
and semi-literate.
The accused have claimed that because they fought deforestation
they became victims of fabricated evidence and of torture at the
hands of the authorities.
Local and international human rights groups launched major campaigns,
and argued that these men were prisoners of conscience. Ultimately,
the four were released. But now Arriaga languishes in prison.
In Mexico, the judicial system is used to silence or discourage
dissident voices and civil society opposition, with false or unfounded
criminal charges, said the London-based rights group Amnesty International
about the series of imprisoned activist farmers.
Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera, colleagues of Arriaga in the
Organization of Ecologist Peasant Farmers in Guerrero, were released
from prison in 2001 when President Vicente Fox stepped in. Citing
the inmates' health problems he ordered their pardon, exempting
them from up to 10 years in prison and closing the court cases against
them.
Montiel and Cabrera, arrested in 1999, were accused of weapons possession
and of growing marijuana. They have filed a case against the government
in the Inter-American Court on Human Rights for reparations, sanctions
against the military officers who detained and tortured them, and
for a declaration of their full innocence.
Today, Montiel and Cabrera are living semi-clandestinely, far from
Guerrero, because they fear attacks from the loggers whose actions
they fought in the past.
''Arriaga's case is very similar to Montiel and Cabrera's. It involves
suspicious accusations against someone who fought deforestation,''
Mario Patrón, legal coordinator of Tlachinollan, a human rights
group in Guerrero, said in a conversation with Tierramérica.
Patrón was one of Montiel and Cabrera's lawyers, and he may take
up the case of Arriaga, who is accused of participating in the 1998
murder of a son of Bernardino Batista, leader of logging groups.
For that same crime there are 13 more arrest orders pending -- all
for peasant farmers who have fought deforestation in Guerrero.
''I'm going to be clear: you run up against certain interests, that
is the problem. That is why I'm here (in prison). But I am sure
that they will have to release me because I didn't do anything wrong,
like my brothers Montiel and Cabrera, who are already free,'' said
Arriaga.
With less than 28 percent of its total area covered in forest, Mexico
each year loses 500,000 hectares of trees. Much of the deforestation
occurs at the hands of groups associated with organized crime.
While still in prison, Montiel and Cabrera received the 125,000-dollar
Goldman Prize, considered the environmental Nobel, from U.S. organizations.
The also won the Chico Mendes Award, named for the Brazilian peasant
farmer, unionist and environmentalist who was assassinated in 1988.
Patrón says the destruction of the forests in the Guerrero mountains
slowed while his clients were behind bars, but has been reactivated
in the past two years.
Almost 40 percent of the forest in the Petetlán and Coyuca de Catalán
areas of Guerrero, where Montiel and Cabrera lived, was destroyed
between 1992 and 2000, according to the environmental watchdog group
Greenpeace.
Satellite images show that these once tree-covered hills in eight
years lost 86,000 of the 226,203 hectares of forest that existed.
Similar destruction has been seen in Coloradas de la Virgen, an
area of more than 50,000 hectares in the northern state of Chihuahua,
ancestral home to the Rarámuri Indians, where some 360 families
still live.
That is where Isidro Baldenegro and Hermenegildo Rivas fought deforestation.
The two indigenous men were released from prison in June as the
result of a court decision. They had spent just over two years behind
bars on charges of weapons and drug possession.
''I made a pledge to continue the fight, and now I feel even more
committed because many people and organizations fought for my freedom,''
Baldenegro told Tierramérica in a phone conversation from his community
in Sierra Tarahumara.
Baldenegro, son of a rural leader who was murdered in 1986, apparently
for challenging loggers, has police protection because he fears
there could be attempts on his life.
''I haven't felt the presence of danger or threats very close yet,
but if we win in the courts and they have to stop the logging operations,
I think (the logging groups) will be very angry and would try to
eliminate some of us,'' said the peasant farmer and activist.
In the trial against Baldenegro and Rivas, the court found that
the charges were groundless and that several police had planted
evidence against them. But the men responsible for the crimes against
the two Indians, like the military officers who accused and tortured
Montiel and Cabrera, remain free and were never brought to justice.
* Diego Cevallos is an IPS correspondent.
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