Prisoners freed after Mexican bishops’ campaign
By Staff Reporter
11 April 2008

Zacario Hernandez, who led the hunger strike, is released from prison Cafod

Almost 150 political prisoners have been freed in Mexico after Catholic bishops led a campaign for their release.

Many of the prisoners had been held for over 10 years and had been subjected to torture and sexual abuse and been forced to confess to crimes they did not commit.

They had been accused of fighting for the Zapatista revolutionary movement but lawyers appointed by the government discovered that there was little or no evidence against them.

About 50 of the prisoners had been on a hunger strike to protest against their imprisonment and had not consumed anything other than water and honey for over a month.

Sarah Smith-Pearse, from Cafod's Latin American and Caribbean department, said: "This is a real breakthrough in the long-standing political conflict in Chiapas. The Mexican authorities haven't just freed a few prisoners; they are saying that torture and false imprisonment are unacceptable and that they are going to address the issue.

"It's a complete turn-around and a gesture of peace and reconciliation after so many years of military repression."

The country's bishops had joined forces with the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas human rights centre, which works in partnership with Cafod, to lobby the Chiapas regional government for the prisoners' release. Two bishops met with the state governor to vouch for the innocence of the prisoners and a pilgrimage was organised that culminated in a Mass outside the gates of the prison. A further Mass was held inside the jail.

Other bishops and campaigners across Mexico signed a letter to the government calling for the prisoners to be freed.

Last month the government bowed under pressure and set up a reconciliation commission which brought in 100 lawyers to study cases from 1994 to 2006. The lawyers discovered that evidence had been fabricated and that some of the prisoners had been tortured and sexually abused.

The prisoners were also interrogated without a lawyer or translator, as is required by Mexican law when Spanish is not the suspect's first language.

Amador Rodriguez Lozano, the Chiapas minister of justice, admitted last week that the freed prisoners were innocent and that they had not been given adequate legal representation. He also promised to prosecute those responsible for unlawfully imprisoning them.

Out of the 360 cases reviewed 143 men and women have now been released. However, 17 prisoners who are supported by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas centre are still being held in Chiapas jails. These prisoners finally called off their hunger strike this week after Bishop Samuel Ruiz of San Cristobal de las Casas urged them to do so for the sake of their health.

"Your struggle has not been in vain," the bishop wrote in a letter.

"Your sacrifice has served for the just cause of those who have been freed in recent days, obtaining results beyond what we expected."

The bishop added: "I am confident that we can continue fighting for your just freedom using other means, and for that reason, I ask you to suspend at this critical moment the hunger strike." In 1994 the Zapatista Army of National Liberation led an armed uprising in protest at the poverty and deprivation of indigenous Mexicans. A ceasefire was agreed after days of fighting with the help of Bishop Ruiz.

The group, which opposes globalisation, was established on January 1, 1994 - the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement, which removed trade tariffs between America, Canada and Mexico, first came into effect.

Successive Mexican governments have favoured a policy of military force over negotiation and stationed large numbers of soldiers in the region to suppress any further unrest, according to Cafod.

The Mexican army and prison authorities have a brutal human rights record, and human rights groups say that torture is commonly used to extract confessions.

Fray Bartolomé de las Casas centre was founded by Bishop Ruiz in 1989 to fight for the rights of poor people mainly in the Chiapas area of Mexico. Cafod has worked in Mexico for more than 20 years.