INTIMIDATION OR FAILED MURDER ATTEMPT?

Dear sisters/brothers

We are going to provide an account of the events that took place yesterday, September 30th, in Mexico City, involving two simple Ñuu Savi (Mixtec) indigenous citizens. This occurred many miles away from the territories ruled by Jose Murat, who shows us how hw is able to organize an aggression of unprecedented dimensions, against those who merely seek peace and justice with dignity. It is alarming that the Governor of the State of Oaxaca has the power to act thus against any citizen across the whole of our national territory.

Raul Gatica and Pedro Bautista, we both were commissioned to travel to Mexico City in order to inform human rights organisms and various organizations that the Inter-American Human Rights Commission had granted measures of caution to Raul Gatica and was studying the possibility to grant the same to some other thirty members of our
organization CIPO- RFM.

We arrived to Mexico City approximately at 7:30am at the bus terminal of the orient TAPO. From there we went to the street Patricio Sanz, number 449 in the Colonia del Valle neighborhood, Mexico City, in order to hold a meeting with the Web of Peace
Building (Red de Constructores de Paz) among others.

We arrived at our destination at 9 in the morning and stayed there until 5 in the afternoon when the meeting ended. We talked to some members of the Peace Web until approximately 6 o’clock. Afterwards we went to Insurgentes tube station by bus. Once there, we queued in order to purchase tickets and then boarded a train heading towards Pantitlan. We decended from the train at the station called San Lazaro where the bus station TAPO is located, where we purchased our bus tickets with the ADO company at approximately 8pm. We got tickets for the next bus run to Oaxaca at 10 o’clock.
We sat down awaiting our departure time. At around 8:30pm we noticed that we were being observed by civilian dressed men of military type. In order to ensure we were not being molested, we carefully spied the moves of the three suspects. Two of them were tall and
muscular with military complexion and haircut, whilst the third man was shorter but equally big, the type of a state judicial policeman. They seemed familiar to us and that is how we noticed them in the first place.

After recognizing them, in order to ensure we were being followed, we moved to another place within the same waiting room, they followed us. We moved to another waiting room, they followed us once again. At 9 pm we had no doubts, they were indeed following us.

Between 9 and 9:30 pm, as we had no choices and leaving the bus station alone would have meant suicide, Pedro Bautista proceeded to make some phone calls in order to arrange for some of our acquaintances and comrades to come and pick us up safely. At the mean time, Raul Gatica informed the police, so that if anything were to happen to us inside the station at least it would not have happened incognito. The three men were signaled as suspects.
We informed the police at Gate 2 who at first did not believe us.
However, as Raul pinpointed the suspects they immediately dispersed, convincing the policeman. Pedro returned from making the phone calls, so both Raul Gatica and Pedro Bautista went to the police headquarters. The authority in charge gave the officer in
turn Pedro Lopez Trejo precise indications of protecting us, because coincidentally as we were being interrogated, one of the subjects we had formerly identified arrived with two men: one wearing a black suit, thin, with a military haircut, aged approximately 30 – 35
years, the other man was younger, maybe 25 years old at most, dressed with a gray suit and blue binoculars to the side.
Especially, once we pointed at them, they realized they had been evidently exposed and quickly dispersed once again. The police commander convinced himself we were being followed, so he started asking us for the reasons of this: why were we being followed?, who
were we?, what did we do?, etc. We explained in detail that we are members of the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca “Ricardo Flores Magon”, indigenous organization that fights against injustice. How we have been denouncing the abuses of governor Murat, the murders by paramilitary groups inside our communities, how the authorities give our forests, rivers, beaches and other precious ancestral resources to local strong men, to national and transnational interest groups or people. Besides, how this past September 14th we were evicted and 14 of our sisters and brothers were taken to prison, when their only
transgression was demanding justice. We told them how both of us came to Mexico City because we are few of the members that have nor been murdered or detained yet, how we came precisely to denounce the situation in Oaxaca, the climate of instability, the murders of opposition agents, how we had come to inform the human right organizations of the measures of caution granted to Raul Javier Gatica Bautista by act No. 976 signed by the executive secretary Santiago A. Canton, where we are also informed that they are
considering granting them to 49 other members of our organization CIPO- RFM.

At about 9:45pm, the police commander gave instructions to auxiliary police Pedro López Trejo, to guarantee our absolute safety and to stay with us until being delivered only with the people we designated safe contacts. He took us to Gate 2, where all the ADO waiting area could be seen, and we realized that the subjects we had formerly identified had left.

Between 10 and 10:20pm we were suffering a nervous crisis, we were scared and any person that seemed suspicious or foreign seemed to pose a threat to us and our safety. We remained vigilant, cautious. Thus, we detected when three subjects arrived. They came together, one was a young man of approximately 20- 25 years of age, dressed cholo style, with a gray sweatshirt, the other was tall, strong, of orange shirt and curly hair, and the last guy was thinner, tanned, with a military haircut, gray- bluish trousers, waistcoat and a
black coat in hand. They started to read the departure information, but did not approach any exit gate.

The cholo style dressed guy talked on a mobile pone, and then secretly said something to the guy wearing the waistcoat, and then they dispersed in opposite ways. The guy dressed formally with trousers stayed put looking in our direction. The cholo style dressed guy went in the direction of Gate 4. There he conversed secretively to the ears with a man dressed with a yellow square- patterned shirt, who was tanned, fat, with military haircut, of judicial police type who carried a black suitcase with wheels and stared in our direction. Then the cholo style dressed man went to a magazine stand in the waiting area and the guy with the orange shirt sat in the chairs facing Gate 2 at Ado, where we were.

At 10:40 the man dressed cholo style left the magazine stand and also sat facing Gate 2, although they did not sit together, they sat back to back in the waiting chairs. Another tanned suspect that spoke to them was dressed in a green shirt with short sleeves with
orange stripes, jeans, and a red cap.

Pedro left in order to make the last phone calls and another suspect approached him. He wore a sky blue sweatshirt, was tanned, with shaved hair, muscular, of judicial police type. He asked Pedro: “AT WHAT TIME IS YOUR FLIGHT?” Pedro distanced himself quickly from the suspect in order to make the pone calls. The suspect started talking to another man of similar traits: muscular, short hair, tall, dressed in black.
We realized they all eventually spoke to the thin, tanned man, of approximately 35 years of age, wearing a long sleeved shirt, a waistcoat and carrying a black jacket in his hands.

At approximately 10:50, the man that was dressed with gray-blue trousers and military type, who had remained standing next to the information approached the suspect of the yellow shirt with square- patterns. He spoke to him in the ears, gave him a suitcase and left.
The man with the gray- blue trousers put his jacket on top of the suitcase and came to Gate 2, where we were.

We told the police agent guarding us that he looked familiar to us, that the man was most probably a policeman because we had seen him already at meetings with the governor Murat in Oaxaca, and because when protests became tense he often inflicted violence upon
protesters. The police agent guarding us took that into account and so the inspected him prior to his boarding the bus and found he was carrying a large- bore gun. In order to justify its possession he showed a credential without signature, and as he handed over his gun
said he worked directly for governor Jose Murat.

The police agent Pedro López Trejo took all his details and his weapon, but he did not explain us why he was not detained. Since we were very scared we did not remark his name, and did not ask for a formal explanation of the missing detention of the suspect. Besides, the policeman look- alike suspect would stare at us with hatred and rancor. The others that reported to him became uneasy and nervously stood up to observe what was happening. Finally, the suspect that had been armed boarded the bus in order to go to Oaxaca. Minutes before eleven o’clock, police agent Pedro López Trejo took a gun
from a suspect who affirmed to work directly for governor Murat, his details were written in a document of the bus company ADO.

As the suspect whose gun was taken stared at us with hatred, we realized that his eyes looked glassy, as if he were drugged. Once he passed the gate he waited a while before boarding the bus to Oaxaca. Eventually he boarded the bus, at approximately 11 pm. Maybe they all thought that we would board that same bus.

At approximately 11:10 pm two comrades from fellow organizations came to pick us up: Juan Anzaldo from Ce Acatl organisation and Erendida Cruz Villegas from CENCOS. We told them all that had happened and they decided we should leave the station from behind,
accompanied by the ADO police agent.

We left to the parking at approximately 11:40 pm, and we arrived there five minutes later. On the way we asked the policeman to give us the details of the man who had formerly been deposed of his weapon. He said he could not give them to us, as it was confidential
information of the bus company, however he said it can be provided if the petition is official.

When we arrived to the parking, before getting in the car of our comrades, we saw a silver colored car arrive, without license plates. Three men descended from that car, one of them we recognized to be a member of the group of stalkers inside the station. He moved
his hands reaching for his armpits and at that moment we signaled him to the police agent accompanying us, who stared at him, and so he just walked straight on and boarded a black Suburban van with polarized windows. They stayed there for approximately ten minutes,
but as they saw that the police agent was still with us they just started descending from the van one by one. We waited for a while there and then made a move the offices of the Attorney General (Ministerio Publico) in order to present our declaration of the
events. That was at approximately 12:25 or half past midnight.

We arrived at the Attorney General’s office at the delegation Venustiano Carranza, Mexico City, in order to present a resumed version of the fact presented here. They constitute the enquiry : VC3T3/3284/04-09. Agent Lidia Reyes of the VC-3 agency took our
declaration, where we clearly state the alleged people responsible for this murder attempt: the citizens José Murat Casab, Celestino Alonso Alvarez, Juan Díaz Pimentel, Ulises Ruiz Ortíz: who are Governor of the Sate of Oaxaca, General Secretary of the Ministry of Interior in Oaxaca, President of the Chamber of Deputies in Oaxaca, and the alleged elected governor of the State of Oaxaca.

The foundations for our claims are that these men have directly stated in many occasions that Raul Gatica shall die. In fact, Juan Díaz Pimentel, under orders of Murat and Ulises Ruiz who was then pre- candidate to the state government, has already hired killers to
assassin Raul Gatica, as it was informed to us by Miguel Angel Cuellar Aguilera.

Since October 18th 2003, Rul Gatica lives in a state of anxiety, fearing to be killed at any moment, however this fear is now exponential, considering that pre- candidates to municipal presidencies have been killed, if 14 of my co- workers were imprisoned, if so many of us have been life threatened and overtly menaced, if paramilitary groups have been sent to our communities, and now we are stalked with brutal intentions as far as in Mexico City, in order to disappear or kill us. We know that we can be killed at any moment, finding ourselves set up in a fight, a robbery, an accident or such. Noe we knoe that we are no longer safe anywhere in the country, that despite having been granted measures of caution by the Inter- American Court we are still faced with situations such as the one described here, whar awaits us next?
Best regards,

Pedro Bautista Rojas
Raúl J. Gatica Bautista

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