After a year of detention Abraham Ramírez Vásquez and the brothers Juventino and Noel García, representatives of the Xanica Committee for Indigenous Rights (CODEDI-Xanica), remain accused of crimes they have never committed.

As we have reported before, the three youths were injured during an armed attack by the Oaxacan state police while have a community harvest was taking place in the Zapotec community of Santiago Xanica in Miahualtan, Oaxaca. According to witnesses, the police acted under explicit orders to kill Abraham Ramírez Vásquez. They were stop by the men and woman harvesting, who used stones and their bodies to defend him. Among those defending Ramírez were the Garcia brothers, who were both injured along with Ramirez. The police arbitrarily picked up the three injured, accusing them of a homicide that took place at a different time and place.

Many independent investigations consider the crimes to be fabricated. For many years the people organized in CODEDI-Xanica, part of the Popular Anti-Neoliberal Oaxacan Magonista Coordination (COMPA) and the Zapatista Magonista Alliance (AMZ) have fought against the imposition of corrupt PRI authorities and have in fact managed to establish a popular authority elected in a people’s general assembly. This same assembly has made accords over the internal regulation of uses and customs in the community.

With their powerful political and economic interests threated, follows of the PRI and PRD, assisted by the state government, have made alliance. Their authority doesn’t respect community rights and customs. When members of CODEDI protest against their intent to revert all of their scarcely won community rights, the city authorities, in collaboration with the state government, unleash persecution and repression against these citizens’ organizations. Off all of the attacks by the Ulises Ruiz’s authoritarian government, this was the first. Since then, he has arrived two times to dispense food and make promises, in complete collusion with the illegitimate municipal authorities.

During their year of incarceration, the three unjustly accused indigenous prisoners have received support and solidarity from hundreds of national and foreign human rights organizations. Organizations of COMPA have had a many protest actions in their support in Oaxaca and Mexico City. In the the course of the dialog between COMPA and the government of Ulises Ruiz, the government hasn’t rescinded its right to detain three supporters of the prisoners. Until now, only two of these prisoners have received conditional release. Spokespeople of the organizations of COMPA and the Zapatista-Magonista Alliance (AMZ) have stated that if the three indigenous Zapotecs are not released in the month of January they will initiated new days of struggle in their defense.