TheNewsMexico.com
December 17, 2001
By Janet Leslie Schwartz and Armando Saliba

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Chiapas - Next week, the human rights arm of the state Congress will begin touring the region to investigate reports armed paramilitaries are conducting a terror campaign.

Human Rights Committee President, Deysi Castillo, confirmed in recent weeks residents reported at least three anti-Zapatista paramilitary groups have been threatening lives and destroying property in indigenous communities all over the state for their support of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).

However, state authorities claim they haven't been presented enough evidence to warrant opening a police investigation, she said.

For this reason, Castillo said, state legislators will visit "many villages" to collect witness statements and if enough proof of rights violations is uncovered, Congress will ask the state government to open an official investigation and level criminal charges against the accused.

"If we discover that there has been a violation of individual rights, threats and the presence of armed groups, we will ask authorities to conduct investigations and take criminal action," she said.

The legislator affirmed she wants the one year-old government of Governor Pablo Salazar Menduguchia to take concrete steps in the prosecution of paramilitary members, citing hundreds of politically motivated murders and disappearances under previous administrations.

In 1997 armed paramilitaries, aligned with the former-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), massacred 45 Tzotzil Indians in the village of Acteal because community members refused to pay a war tax to help them fight the EZLN. In the aftermath, more than 10,000 people fled their homes and only recently began to return after living four years exile.

Three weeks ago, despite protests from the State and Federal Attorney General's Office, a judge released six men jailed for their involvement in the Acteal killings, which Castillo said has helped regenerate fear in the region, in addition to demonstrating the power of the PRI.

Even though the PRI no longer controls the state administration, she said, it controls most municipal governments and obviously has great influence in the judicial system.