[iDC] indymedia reporter killed

[Ryan Griffis]

Hope this is appropriate to post as a follow up to Dara's  
announcement of Brad Will's murder.

http://bang.calit2.net/sdhacklab/oaxaca/

The borderlands Hacklab, Electronic Disturbance  Theater and Rising  
Tide NorthAmerica call for a virtual sit-in against the websites of  
the G8+5 and the Mexican government during the G8+5 meetings on  
October 3-4th, 2006 in Mexico.

While the Mexican government tries to play host to the G8+5  
Gleneagles Dialogue on Climate Change, it is mounting a massive  
violent attack on the people of Oaxaca. Apparently the Mexican  
government thinks it can cleanse the country of its growing pro- 
democracy rebellion while laying out a red carpet to world  
politicians including the G8 Energy Ministers. The neoliberal project  
of corporate globalization and fossil-fuel-based "energy security"  
that causes global warming is built on massive violence, from armies  
to riot police to militarized borders, to turn the global south into  
its sweatshop and repress the uprisings for justice, democracy, and  
sustainable livelihood of the people in Mexico and other countries.

While the neoliberal model of industrial "development" sees the  
remaining indigenous and "undeveloped" lands of the Earth as  
territories for capitalist exploitation of natural resources and  
human labor, the schoolteachers leading Oaxaca's popular pro- 
democracy strike have a different vision. By taking direct action to  
shut down the tyrannical rule of their state governor Ulises Ruiz  
Ortiz, the people of Oaxaca are teaching that another world is possible.

On Sunday, October 1, 2006, a headline in the Mexico City daily  
Milenio proclaimed, "Preparations for war in Oaxaca," while Mexico  
City's El Universal newspaper reported that helicopters, planes and  
15 troop trucks had assembled in Huatulco, a Pacific tourist getaway  
and military hub a short flight — but a long and difficult drive —  
from Oaxaca city.
According to the independent news website Narconews.com, which has been
covering the Other Campaign of the Zapatistas, on Sunday, October1,  
2006:

"The Mexican Navy carried out a reconnaissance operation over the  
buildings and public spaces occupied by the Popular Assembly of the  
Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO in its Spanish initials). Two MI-17  
helicopters and one CASA C212 Navy airplane with registration number  
AMP-118 flew over the streets of the city – where opponents of  
Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz have maintained several encampments over  
the past 130 days – for about 40 minutes."

"The zocalo, or central city square, the Oro and La Ley radio  
stations, the state government building, the Brenamiel and El Rosario  
radio antennas, as well as the Department of Finance building – all  
places where the rebels have installed protest camps – were  
reconnoitered by low-level flights of military aircraft. As they  
passed over the Radio Oro facilities, the two helicopters were  
fruitlessly "attacked" with fireworks that teachers of the National  
Education Workers' Union local Section 22 launched from Conzatti  
Garden. The airplane then made four more passes over the areas around  
the zocalo and returned to the airport, where five other military  
aircraft were stationed. At 5:30 that afternoon, the naval  
surveillance plane and two AMHT-202 and AMHT-205 helicopters landed  
on a city airstrip and let out 18 soldiers in black-and-grey  
camouflage, bulletproof vests, helmets and firearms."

"Lino Celaya Luría, state secretary of Citizen Protection, confirmed  
that the objective of the military flights was to "reconnoiter" the  
scene of the conflict, but claimed not to know if this was the  
prelude to an eventual federal operation to remove the protesters.  
The state official limited himself to saying: "We were informed that  
a flight would occur over the areas where the dissidents are present.  
We believe this is to obtain field information on the situation."

"Meanwhile, from the occupied radio stations, the rebels again  
declared a maximum alert in the face of what they imagine could be  
the beginning of a removal/eviction operation against the popular and  
teachers' movement."

Over half of the Oaxaca's 3.2 million people, most of whom are  
indigenous, live in poverty, and 21.5 percent of those over 15 are  
illiterate, while the average number of years of schooling is 5.6  
years -- almost two less than Mexico's national average. Many  
students in Oaxaca's rural schools lack books and desks. In May, tens  
of thousands of teachers seized the capital's leafy central plaza to  
demand wage increases and improved school conditions. The following  
month, Governor Ulises Ruiz sent police to attempt to retake the  
heart of the city. Since then, radical social movements of workers,  
peasants, students, women and others have joined the striking  
teachers, building street barricades and taking over radio and  
television stations. They demand that Ruiz resign, alleging that he  
rigged the 2004 election and uses paramilitary gangs to attack  
dissidents. A total of five "megamarches" were organized with the  
largest reaching the astonishing number of around 300,000 people, or  
one out of ten people who live in the state.

During the protests, as many as six people have been killed in  
violent incidents which apparently involved irregular armed groups  
linked to the Ruiz administration and the police, according to human  
rights organisations. A number of demonstrators have also been  
arrested and injured, and further assaults perpetrated against them  
by organized, unidentified gangs of thugs have been reported.

One example of neoliberal "development" in Mexico with major  
implications for Oaxaca is Plan Puebla Panama (PPP), a transnational  
"mega-infrastructure" project that would transform the region's  
geography and economy if implemented. While claiming that one of its  
main goals is to improve the conditions for the people of the region,  
PPP is stealing land from indigenous people for infrastructure  
projects to move resources more quickly into the hands of  
multinational corporations and commodifying their culture for the  
tourist industry. One of the projects affecting Oaxaca is the  
creation of a super highway at Mexico's skinniest point, the Isthmus  
of Tehuantepec, in order to move resources more readily across the  
land from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This transportation corridor  
will be surrounded with sweatshops, maquiladoras, operating without  
labor and environmental protections. For all of these objectives,  
neoliberal control over the government of Oaxaca is key to the  
realization of the PPP project.

Mexico has an ugly history of military repression that coincides with  
major world gatherings occurring inside the country. 38 years ago  
today, October 2nd, the Mexican military massacred hundreds of  
student protesters at Tlatelolco, just days before the 1968 Olympic  
Games began in Mexico City. If military violence against the pro- 
democracy protesters of Oaxaca occurs before, during or after the G8  
meeting in Mexico, the G8 leaders as well as the Mexican military  
must be held accountable for the injuries and death. To prevent this,  
we demand that the G8 officials who are meeting this week in Mexico  
must publicly speak out to condemn the possibility of another Mexican  
massacre at Oaxaca.

We demand that the G8 end its support of destructive "carbon  
trading." The G8 is composed of the leaders of the richest 8  
countries in the world, who are responsible for the policies of war,  
criminalization of cross-border human migration, and massive  
environmental destruction. While they claim to be meeting to solve  
the climate change crisis, they are in fact discussing carbon trading  
agreements that will allow corporations to profit while exporting  
their pollution to the global south. Carbon trading threatens to turn  
countries like Brazil into a "carbon sink" for the global north while  
ignoring the underlying capitalist ideology of endless growth and  
boundless consumption that is creating massive climate change.

Help us stop the G8 by slowing the propaganda systems that the G8+5   
and the Mexican Government will be using during the meetings and the  
attacks to spread disinformation about their actions. As in our  
previous actions, people from all around the world will make their  
virtual presence manifest on the doorstep of the G8+5 and the Mexican  
Government.

More news and updates about the unfolding situation in Oaxaca at
http://narconews.com
More information on resistance to the G8+5 meeting in Mexico City at
http://contrag8.revolt.org