STRATEGIC ACTION

April 7th, 2005

 

Felipe Arreaga Sánchez, founding member of the Organization of Campesino Ecologists of the Sierra de Petatlán, Guerrero, Mexico, unjustly imprisoned.

 

The following strategic action was sent to us by the Environmental Defender Law Centre. The SJC has in the past sent out a number of appeals in support of campesino environmentalists who have been persecuted for their opposition to the clear-cut logging of their local forests in the states of Guerrero and of Chihuahua (see Past Urgent Actions).

Felipe Arreaga was an active member of the OCESP from its formation in 1997. The organization was created to mobilize communities in the mountains of Petatlan in Guerrero State to campaign peacefully against deforestation due to illegal logging operations run by local caciques (local political bosses) reportedly linked to senior state government officials. (Until very recently, the state government of Guerrero was in the hands of the PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which until it lost power in 2000 had ruled Mexico for more than seventy years; the PRI continues to be a powerful federal opposition party that is also very present at the state and municipal levels.) For years, caciques and members of the former state government have made repeated unfounded allegations against the OCESP, accusing them of links to criminal and armed groups.

Felipe Arreaga was arrested on November 3, 2004, and charged with the 1998 murder of Abel Bautista Guillen, the son of a local cacique. Felipe has been incarcerated ever since, and faces an unfair trial for a murder he did not commit. Amnesty International has declared Felipe a "prisoner of conscience." Amnesty fears that his arrest and the issuing of arrest warrants against fourteen former members of the OCESP are reprisals against the organization for its environmental activism. The charges may also be designed to deter the work of Felipe's wife, Celsa Valdovinos, who leads the Organizacion de Mujeres Ecologistas (Women's Environmentalist Organization) as well as the work of other environmentalists in Guerrero. In particular, Amnesty International believes that the investigation and criminal charges brought against Felipe Arreaga are due to his leading role in peaceful protests against excessive and illegal logging of forests of Guerrero State.

At the end of February 2005, a key prosecution witness in the case testified in court that he had been coerced into implicating Felipe Arreaga and others in the original investigation into the murder. There are many other irregularities in the proceedings that demonstrate that the case against Felipe has been fabricated. For example, the murder took place in 1998, but investigative steps were not carried out until 2000. The case was then archived until an arrest warrant issued in 2004. In addition, one of the accused allegedly identified by the two witnesses had died in 1996, and another was a child at the time of the crime. Felipe Arreaga provided three witnesses at his arraignment, proving that he was incapacitated at the time of the murder, as he was receiving medical treatment for back problems in another community. In addition, a prosecution witness has failed to appear in court and his whereabouts are reportedly unknown.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

In 1999, two other OCESP members, Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera, were detained by the military and tortured to force them to confess to firearms and drugs offenses. The two were convicted on the basis of fabricated evidence, and were adopted as "prisoners of conscience" by Amnesty International. In 2001, President Fox ordered their release in the face of massive national and international pressure. Rodolfo Montiel was awarded several international prizes, including the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. He now finds himself to be one of the fourteen OCESP leaders against whom arrest warrants have been issued in connection with the murder in this case.

In June of 2004, Isidro Baldenegro and Hermenegildo Rivas, Tarahumara indigenous anti-logging activists, were finally released from prison after prosecutors concluded that there was no basis for the weapons and drug charges filed against them in March 2003 by Chihuahua State police. Several officers have now been charged with planting marijuana and weapons during the initial arrest.

According to the Environmental Defender Law Centre, fabricated criminal charges and unfair criminal procedures (resulting from incidents of collusion between the judicial police and local caciques) are frequently used in Mexico in order to deter human rights defenders, social activists and others opposing the abuses of power at a local level. Mexico's judicial system suffers from endemic flaws that routinely deny the right to fair trial and the presumption of innocence and make it extremely difficult for those accused of fabricated charges to clear their name. The fact that those responsible for such misuse of the judicial system are virtually never held to account, serves to encourage further abuses of this kind.

RECOMMENDED ACTION:

Please write to the newly-elected governor of Guerrero, the Attorney General of Guerrero, and the federal Minister of the Environment to express your concern with regard to the incarceration of Felipe Arreaga Sánchez on what are believed both by Amnesty International and the Environment Defenders Law Centre to be politically-motivated charges. Please remind the government that Felipe Arreaga and his wife Celsa Baldovinos have worked for many years not only to oppose excessive logging but also to replant and restore the forests of their region. Please point out that Felipe's accuser, Bernardino Bautista Valle, is widely known for being one the principal cacique timber merchants in the region of Petatlán, and that his economic and political interests have been gravely affected by the work that Felipe Arreaga and other environmentalist campesinos have done.

In view of the spurious nature of the accusations against Felipe Arreaga and the legal rights violations to which he has been subjected, please request that he be immediately released from custody and that the charges against him be dropped.

ADDRESSES:

C.P. Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo

Elected Governor of the State of Guerrero

Horacio Nelson número 15 Fraccionamiento Costa Azul

C.P. 39850, Acapulco, Guerrero.

Tel y Fax. 52 744 48481462 and 52 744 4842008.

zeferino@acabtu.com.mx

Lic. Jesús Ramírez Guerrero

Attorney General for the State of Guerrero

Carretera Nacional México-Acapulco Km. 6+300

Tramo Chilpancingo- Petaquillos, Chilpancingo 39090, Guerrero, México

Fax: 52 747 47 22328

Ing. Alberto Cárdenas Jiménez.

Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources of the Federal Government (SEMARNAT)

Boulevard Adolfo Ruiz Cortínez, Colonia Jardines de la Montaña, C.P. 14210, Delegación

Tlalpan, México, Distrito Federal.

Tel. 52 55 56280602.

Fax: 52 55 56280643 and 56280600.