Mexiko: Solidarity With Chiapas More Than 3000 Organizations

La Jornada
Saturday, July 1, 2000.

Solidarity With Chiapas
More Than 3000 Organizations and Intellectuals Demand Peace

Portuguese Nobel prizewinner, José Saramago, Catalan novelist Manuel
Vázquez Montalbán, Argentine soccer coach, Jorge Valdano and US political
scientist James Petras, signed an appeal, along with 3100 union and
political organizations, intellectuals and artists, in which they demanded
that international institutions and bodies comply with the democracy and
human rights clause of the Preferential Accords signed with the European
Union.

They warned that - because of the fact this accord does not have a
mechanism for monitoring and verification - it will be the institutions in
the region which will "watch over and apply pressure to the Mexican
government to comply with the signed accords."

Builders from the Copenhagen construction union, the staff officers of the
Campesino Confederation of Peru, several Calvinist pastors from
Switzerland, organized Third World emigrants from Karlsruhe, Germany, and
the Barcelona Dead Poets Club, all added their signatures to those of great
personalities of letters, in order to remind the world that, while the
election is going on in Mexico, in one corner of the country, Chiapas, the
war continues.

Politicians on the left of the ideological spectrum, ecologists and
workers, academics and religious persons, artists and social activists from
Brazil and Austria, Spain, Bolivia and France were able to come together to
sign a public letter to "civil society," titled "We Will Stop the War in
Chiapas," in which they demanded the following from the Mexican government:

- Demilitarization of the state of Chiapas.

- Disarmament and the breaking up of paramilitary groups.

- Respect for the San Andrés Accords.

- The return of those displaced by war to their places of origin.

- Release of political prisoners.

- Elimination of restrictions on presence of international observers.

Workers laid off from Peruvian shipyards, French theatrical groups, like
Les Heretiques du Son, settlers from the Residents' Occupation Association
of the Promised Land, and journalists from the Austrian newspaper,
Suedwind, declared themselves to be "on alert" in this message, "in order
to step up the fight for the defense of the Mexican peoplés human rights."
Together they are assuming the commitment to "watch over and pressure" the
Mexican government "in order to keep those paths open for a just and
dignified solution to the conflict."

Originally published in Spanish by La Jornada
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Translated by irlandesa