Palestine to Oaxaca

If you are in NYC this Sunday come to the Oaxaca Encuentro that forms part of this weekend 's memorial and convergence in honor of Brad Will.

Here is a true gem of a follow-up to August's Zapatismo and the Levant post...

The Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign Honors the Martyrs of Oaxaca

Jerusalem, November 3, 2006: In this dreadful Autumn of death and destruction, the Palestinian and Mexican people are united more than ever in a common history, mourning and struggle.

In Palestine in the last 48 hours a new massacre has been perpetrated. 20 martyrs from the refugee camp of Beit Hanoun have been added to the hundreds of victims that have been killed since June, when the Occupation forces launched another ruthless offensive in the Gaza Strip.

In the same way, since June the Mexican government has started to use all the destructive force of its military against the 70,000 educational workers in the state of Oaxaca who struggle for their rights. The same government that followed the demands of the US government to send its soldiers to invade and massacre the Iraqi people today turns these weapons against its own people in defense of imperialist interests.

We mourn the dead of Oaxaca as we mourn our own and we take courage from the determination in the struggle that this people has shown in response to the repression. They have united their voices in the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO): some 350 organizations have taken back the city and struggle to overthrow the corrupt government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.

If the government wanted to crush this movement with the invasion of the 29th October and the murder of the protesters, we now know that this goal has not been achieved and that the activists of the APPO know how to respond to the latest brutal attacks.

We know that the Mexican Intifada continues and spreads to other states of the nation.

As Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign representing some 50 popular committees that struggle day after day in the villages ghettoized by the wall and besieged by the complex mechanism of Zionist repression and expulsion, we want to let you know that you are not alone, that your struggle is our struggle.

60 years of occupation, dispossession, daily murder and eventually the attempt to transform Palestine into a giant open air prison were not enough to destroy the determination of the Palestinian people. The majority of our people has been expelled from their land and struggles for the return to their homes, the rest of us resists apartheid and a life in open-air prisons behind walls and razor wire.

The experience of these 60 years of resistance enable us to recognize our brothers in the Mexican indigenous communities who have resisted genocide for over 500 years. We salute the resistance of the people of Oaxaca against a corrupt puppet government and see in it a new point of reference for the struggle against imperialism.

We join the call of our Mexican comrades to demand*:

1. That Ulises Ruiz Ortiz immediately step down from his post as governor of the state of Oaxaca. His authoritarian policies are at the root of the bloodshed and the struggle. His permanent presence is the main obstacle to a political solution.

2. The immediate withdrawal of the Federal Preventive Police from the city of Oaxaca.

3. The immediate end to all forms of repression, the liberation of the arrested and the detained and the return of the disappeared.

4. Unconditional respect for Human Rights and the guarantee of safety for all, in particular the members of the APPO.

5. The punishment of the intellectual and material authors of the murders perpetrated by the paramilitary groups of the state.

*We further remind the Federal Government that it holds the responsibility for the repression and assaults on the population and organizations of Oaxaca.

We join all those that ask a political solution and the respect of the demands put forward by the APPO.

Jamal Jumá
Coordinator of the Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign