Cancun repression and torture
- added August 26, 2005
- 3 responses
-
-
embed code
-
-
-
- neurolumpio
- added this
-
-
- related topics
-
- VC2 Top Contenders US (8822)
- VC2 on TV (6304)
Protesters jailed after a weekend protest in Cancun accused police of brutality and called upon Amnesty International on Sunday to take up their cause.
Claudia Pérez, one of several hundred people arrested Saturday after a crowd blocked Cancun's main hotel access road, spoke to EL UNIVERSAL newspaper on Sunday via cellular telephone from inside the municipal jail.
"There are some 500 of us being held in a room four by six meters," she said. "There's no room to neither sit nor stand, it's really hot, there's no air, and they gave us only six, one-liter bottles of water for all of us."
Pérez said that the protesters had used the cellular phone, carried clandestinely into the holding cell, to call Amnesty International in hopes that the rights group would investigate the conditions of the arrests and detention.
The demonstrators had been protesting the recent jailing of Leyda Campos, director of "La Casita," a shelter for abused women and children, when they clashed with riot police Saturday in Cancun's luxury hotel zone.
The police used water hoses and tear gas to clear the crowd, and wrestled with some protesters before arresting 577 people for blocking the roadway.
At least three families have accused La Casita of holding relatives against their will, but protesters charged that local authorities, led by state Governor Mario Villanueva, are carrying out a vendetta against the shelter.
The national leadership of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) on Sunday called upon the National Commission for Human Rights to intervene in the situation.
Leyda Campos' detention, said the PRD in an official statement, "appears to be an act of vengeance by the governor of Quintana Roo" after the activist alleged wrongdoing by several members of Villanueva's administration.
"The repression unleashed (Saturday) is a very grave matter," the PRD continued. "The protesters were brutally beaten ... (and) this is not the first case of police brutality in Cancun."
In June, police doused activists with tear gas outside the state prosecutors' offices at another angry demonstration in support of Leyda Campos.
Claudia Pérez, one of several hundred people arrested Saturday after a crowd blocked Cancun's main hotel access road, spoke to EL UNIVERSAL newspaper on Sunday via cellular telephone from inside the municipal jail.
"There are some 500 of us being held in a room four by six meters," she said. "There's no room to neither sit nor stand, it's really hot, there's no air, and they gave us only six, one-liter bottles of water for all of us."
Pérez said that the protesters had used the cellular phone, carried clandestinely into the holding cell, to call Amnesty International in hopes that the rights group would investigate the conditions of the arrests and detention.
The demonstrators had been protesting the recent jailing of Leyda Campos, director of "La Casita," a shelter for abused women and children, when they clashed with riot police Saturday in Cancun's luxury hotel zone.
The police used water hoses and tear gas to clear the crowd, and wrestled with some protesters before arresting 577 people for blocking the roadway.
At least three families have accused La Casita of holding relatives against their will, but protesters charged that local authorities, led by state Governor Mario Villanueva, are carrying out a vendetta against the shelter.
The national leadership of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) on Sunday called upon the National Commission for Human Rights to intervene in the situation.
Leyda Campos' detention, said the PRD in an official statement, "appears to be an act of vengeance by the governor of Quintana Roo" after the activist alleged wrongdoing by several members of Villanueva's administration.
"The repression unleashed (Saturday) is a very grave matter," the PRD continued. "The protesters were brutally beaten ... (and) this is not the first case of police brutality in Cancun."
In June, police doused activists with tear gas outside the state prosecutors' offices at another angry demonstration in support of Leyda Campos.
-
-
-
-
- neurolumpio
- 08/26/05
-
Excellent raw footage
-
-
-
-
- delgado_mon
- 08/26/05
-
-
OMG.
thank you for a brave contribution. I've appended it to my 'protests & educating cops how to handle peaceful protest' blog post.
Thank you.
BlueBerry Pick'n
can be found @
ThisCanadian.com
"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"-
-
-
-
- BlueBerry_PickN
- 05/02/06
-
-
The footage is great, but I'd like to hear a voiceover in Spanish or English, explaining the reason for the protest and perhaps some peripheral details (brief history of police violence in Quintana Roo; jail conditions in Mexico, etc.) This could also be improved by getting some interviews with the people who were jailed or brutalized or both so that the viewer could hear their voices and experiences.
Login/Registration is required to add a response.
