(en) REPRESSION OF MEXICAN STUDENTS - Media whitewash for nytcamer@ursula; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 22:45:40 -0500 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - paz libertad REPRESSION OF MEXICAN STUDENTS Due to the corporate media monopoly and the official information blockade, the reality of what happens in Mexico is not transmitted beyond its borders. We, a group of independent journalists, have formed MOVEMENT 2000, an alternative press service covering crucial events in Mexico. We send you this information in hopes that you will spread the word and organize for peace as best you can. The war of counterinsurgency arrived in Mexico City in the dawn of Sunday, February 6, 2000. In their new role as Federal Preventative Police (PFP), more than 2500 elements of the Mexican Army raided the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) under orders of the Secretary of Government. The seizure of the UNAM facilities began at 4 am, after the second judge of the district, Marma del Carmen Flores Cervantes, issued 430 arrest warrants for striking students, which had been solicited on Thursday February 3 by the Federal Government. More than 600 students were arrested, most of whom were gathered in the Che Guevara Auditorium of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. The arrested students were transported first to the offices of the Attorney General of the Republic, and later the minors, approximately 76, were taken to the Guardian Council for Minors, and the older students were transported to Reclusorio Norte, a jail in the north of the city. Students were still in assembly discussing the possibilities of dialogue when they heard the boots of the PFP pound through the hallways of the school at 6:40AM. Theyre here, they yelled, as they heard the troops surround the auditorium. Hours later, the Che Guevara Auditorium was empty for the first time in 9 months; scattered remnants of the last moments students struggle, papers, pencils, backpacks, an odd shoe were all that remained. A deathly cold wind and an eerie calm fills the desolate UNAM campus. Federal police patrol the university entrances and circuits, and city police blockaded principal avenues of access. Hundreds of riot police await orders in the surrounding area and within university facilities. At 10:30AM, we headed towards the campus on foot, as access is closed to vehicles. At the first blockade, the preventive police of the delegation of Tlalpan informed us that we would enter university territory at our own risk, as it was now under control of federal forces. He warned us that the PFP does not like the arms you carry, they dont like video and photos, and beyond here, theyre in control, and some press has already had their cameras and film confiscated. After a quick tour of the principal accesses to the UNAM, we verified that there was constant patrol of university accesses and circuits, checkpoints on Insurgentes Avenue, and inside young men with military haircuts patrol on mountain bikes, verbally assaulting those who circulate, especially those who are identified as press. According to a UNAM press release, university Rector Juan Ramon De La Fuente was not aware of the operation until after 7am, when the Secretary of Government, Disdoro Carrasco informed university authorities that the university facilities had been recuperated. The chief of the PFP, Wilfrido Robledo, reports that the troops will occupy the university for 2-4 weeks. The government counterinsurgency campaign designed to destroy the student movement struck a divisive blow to peace with the invasion of the UNAM and the arrest of strikers. The PFP is a federal police division of the Mexican army specialized in counterinsurgency and urban warfare, formed in 1999 by then Secretary of Government and now PRI presidential candidate, Francisco Labastida Ochoa. The arrival of federal forces in University territory not only violates the UNAMs constitutionally protected autonomy, but marks an escalation of low intensity warfare into Mexico City. The most notorious violation of the UNAMs autonomy occurred in 1968, when the army entered the university prior to the massacre of Tlateloloco, in which thousands of students were assassinated and arrested. Low intensity warfare is defined by author Carlos Fazzio as a political-military strategy fought in the arena of civil society in which the nature of war converts into a political-ideological conflict. Psychological operations aim to influence the behavior of the civil population by exploiting the vulnerabilities of the enemy and their support base in order to dominate the spirit. The PFP occupation comes after a massive media propaganda campaign to criminalize the striking students, divide students and families, and prepare the public to accept the use of state repression against the student movement. The students of the UNAM, National Autonomous University of Mexico, an academic community of 300,000, have been on strike since April 20, 1999. The student movement demands the protection of students constitutionally-guaranteed right to free higher education and rollback of privatization initiatives and neoliberal reforms adopted in accordance with the World Banks structural adjustment programs. The 9 month strike has been characterized by lengthy assemblies and countless marches, and a divisive media campaign which focused on internal divisions and ignored reports of government infiltration. This marks the fourth time that the goverment has tried to jail striking students, and the second PFP operation in the UNAM this week. 248 students were arrested on Tuesday, February 1, in the National Preparatory School Number 3, an incident which marked the beginning of the escalation of government aggression.In August 1999, a military and police operation was sent to the Lacandon jungle to arrest students who, while attending a Zapatista Gathering for the Defense of Culture and Patrimony, had joined indigenous people in protesting the military invasion of the Zapatista community of Amador Hernandez. In December 1999 over 70 students were arrested by Mexico City police during a protest outside the US embassy in support of Mumia Abu Jamal and in solidarity with the protesters arrested in Seattle. PREPA 3 On February 1, 2000, at 8pm, The Federal Preventative Police (PFP) forcefully evicted striking students and seized the National Preparatory School Number 3 located in the north of Mexico City. The 300 elements of the PFP and 700 elements of the city police were called upon by the University Rector Juan Ramon de La Fuente to secure the facilities after a group of university police and paid thugs (porros) provoked a violent confrontation with students earlier in the day. The confrontation and police operation resulted in 37 injured people, 248 students under arrest, and 25 students whose whereabouts are unknown. In the early afternoon, approximately 50 men, the majority over the age of 35, raided the high school armed with bats, pipes, rocks and explosives. Identifying themselves as members of Auxilio UNAM, the university police division of the General Direction of Community Protection, they forced their way into the school and violently evicted the 30 students of the General Strike Council who occupied the school in defense of the strike. A few minutes later, the secretary general of the school arrived with a busload of 200 people whom he led into the school, reinforcing the occupation of the supposed university employees, many of whom later admitted to having been contracted earlier that day in the subway to do a special job in the UNAM. Students, teachers, workers and parents congregated outside the school. They rejected the intervention, imploring the security forces and porros to leave the school grounds, yelling We want dialogue. Here we are not divided, there are not strikers and non-strikers, We are the Justo Sierra Student Front, since January 30. In recent days, Prepa 3 students, both active strike supporters and those students calling for a return to classes, had found common ground through assemblies discussions. As had been occurring in recent weeks in other UNAM schools, opposing students had renewed dialogue, joining forces to bring a successful end the strike. Once inside the school, the porros launched bottles, rocks, and furniture at the group gathered outside the school gates. The students threw the same objects back inside, and after 20 minutes of group effort, they broke the gate open. Only 50 of the men inside faced the crowd of 200 gathered outside the gates. The head-on collision left 37 wounded, all men over the age of 35. When the fighting ceased, the students had recuperated the school grounds. At 4 PM, 700 members of the Mexico City police surrounded the high school and blocked off area roadways. The students inside the school reinforced the barricades at the entrances and gathered together in the patio, where they exchanged chants and songs with the crowds of neighbors, families and students gathered outside. At 7 PM, the PFP marched towards the school, and while the students reiterated their call for dialogue, the 300 elements forced open the doors and stormed the school. They pulled the students apart and dragged them out of the school, passing each striking student through a valley formed by 150 PFP elements, who shoved, hit, kicked, and manhandled the young women and men. 248 students were arrested and bussed to the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic where they were subject to questioning, background checks and physical and psychological exams. The students were not seen again until the next morning when the 86 students under the age of 18 are bussed to the Guardian Council for Minors and 175 older students were bussed to the Reclusorio del Norte,a jail in the north of the city. Families and students camp outside of the jail and detention center, and exchange supportive slogans with their children Students you are not alone, Your parents are en lucha who respond from inside their holding cells. Students were physically and psychologically tortured the night they spent in the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, according to Juan Del Dios Hernandez, the students lawyer. 30 students reported to him that elements of the Federal Judicial Police beat them, suffocated them with plastic bags, needled them under their fingernails, and harassed and threatened to rape the young women. The students in the Reclusorio Norte have yet to be formally charged, but the PGR has declared that they will be charged with up to 7 crimes: looting, damage to federal property, theft and rioting, and three which are considered grave, sabotage, terrorism, sedition. Terrorism carries a prison sentence of up to 40 years. The 75 students detained in Guardian Council of Minors have all refused to give statements, demanding that they be treated as a group, all in or all out. They have been charged with aggravated assault, damage of property, and qualified theft. 29 of these minors began a hunger strike on Thursday; in solidarity with their companeros in the Reclusorio Norte, they drink only water and honey, which is brought to them by their parents who give the youngsters periodic health checks. ULTIMATUM Wednesday morning, the day after the arrests, parents reiterated that the confrontation in the Prepa 3 had not occurred between striking and non-striking students, as the official media had declared, but between students and an external group hired by university officials. They implored authorities not to use their children as carne de canon (flesh for the canon) for their political disputes. Social activists called for an end to the low intensity warfare against students on strike,characterized by psychological and propaganda warfare, aimed to infiltrate, isolate, intimidate and divide the student movement. That afternoon the Attornery Generals Office requested arrest warrants for 430 striking students and social activists. Thursday afternoon the Rector called 10 CGH representatives to an urgent meeting, which the state media declared would be the strikers, last chance, to be held in the Old Palace of the Inquisition on Friday at 10am. The CGH debated their response to the Rectors ultimatum in an assembly that lasted through the night until shortly before the morning meeting. The 10 student representatives entered the meeting under protest, reading a CGH declaration which called for the immediate release of 324 detained students, the removal of the PFP from university facilities, and an immediate return to dialogue of the original 6 strike demands. In the afternoon, 12, 000 supporters, parents, and students marched from the Angel of Independence, to the Secretary of Government, and on to the Zscalo to demand the liberation of the students and a peaceful solution to the university conflict through dialogue. Outside of the Secretary of Government, parents called on authorities to come out and explain their childrens legal situation. The Secretary of Government's only response came from video cameras on the roof which monitored their pleas. On the way to the Zscalo, a group of marchers detoured to assemble outside of the Old Palace of Inquisition where the meeting was taking place, but the strikers and advisors asked the group to move on so as not to endanger the already tense negotiations. 10 hours after it began, the meeting ended and both sides declared that they had been unable to reach any agreement. The Rector demanded complete evacuation of university facilities in exchange for the release of the imprisoned students, and blamed the failure of the negotiations on the students inflexibility. The students responded that they would not barter the liberation of hostages for the end of the strike, and reiterated their call for a return to dialogue the next day. CONTEXT University officials broke off dialogue with students in December, only two weeks after signing an agreement that guaranteed that the solution to the conflict would come through dialogue with the CGH and not through repression. On January 20, University and government authorities organized a plebiscite in which members of the university were asked to vote whether or not they supported the Rectors proposal to end the strike. The CGH also organized a consultation, held on January 18 and 19, in which they asked university members and the general public to vote on their proposals to solve the conflict through dialogue. Both groups declared that the public had supported their proposals, and both sides accused the other of tampering with the votes. The CGH warned that the official plebiscite would be used as a pretext for repression. The news magazine Proceso reported that the plebiscite had been organized by the Secretary of Government. The Office of the Rector personally contacted thousands of students to encourage them to vote and attend assemblies to demand the return to classes, causing an increase in the participation and attendance at university assemblies by students who had not supported the strike effort. Students who for months had only seen the CGH on the news debated with them face to face, a dialogue which searched for a solution to reopen the school as soon as possible. Non-striking and striking students worried that the prolonged strike would result in the permanent closure of the UNAM or a fragmentation of the different faculties and institutes in order to facilitate privatization. Students protested that political and neoliberal influences were impeding dialogue to resolve the conflict, declaring the UNAM a hostage of campaign politics. At this moment, the future of the university and the jailed students, as well as peace in Mexico, could not be more in danger. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-02.11.00-22:45:32-3324