Army Actions Raise Fears for Chiapas Rights

When peasant farmers invaded his ranch last year, Marh Kanter tried to do what his family had always done to protect its property: take it back at gunpoint.

A peasant was killed by Kanter’s gunslingers in the confrontation. Early this month, the farmers stormed into the town of Yajalon and killed Kanter.

Neither side consulted with the police. Authority had come to mean little in the southern state of Chiapas, with an area half the size of Delaware controlled by Indian rebels, two men both claiming the governorship and highway robbers who style themselves as civic activists collecting “tolls” that supposedly finance political campaigns.

Chiapas, government supporters say, had become a state in anarchy. They argue that President Ernesto Zedillo had little choice but to send in troops to arrest leaders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army in order to restore law and order.

Indeed, the government has termed the Mexican army occupation of former rebel-held territory “re-establishing a state of law.”

But human rights activists worry that the way the government is handling the crackdown--sealing off the combat area and arresting a human rights activist as a Zapatista--bodes ill for the style of law and order that will be restored.

Their fears were reinforced by a one-page communique Monday from three rebel commanders alleging that soldiers tortured women and children in the remote village of Rosario Ibarra and cut off one man’s arm. The communique, signed by rebel leaders Ana Maria, David and Javier, alleged that women were forced to tell the soldiers the organization they belonged to on the threat that their children would be killed.

A government spokesman flatly denied the allegation. “The government continues to work within the law and with respect for the law,” he said.

“Chiapas has never been ruled by strict compliance with the law,” said Pablo Romo, director of the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center here. “The law has always been applied against Indians and peasants.”

But in the past year, the law has hardly been applied against anyone at all.

Local residents warn visitors to avoid certain stretches of highway after dark because bandits operate there.

A truck driver complains that people alternately claiming to be Zapatistas or opposition party activists routinely block off sections of the highway into town and charge tolls of up to $100 for passage.

“They claim these are donations, but everyone knows they put them in their pockets,” he said. “Only the government has the right to collect taxes.”

But then again, which government? Chiapas has two.

One is run by the ruling party out of the state capital in Tuxtla Gutierrez, and the other is run by the leftist opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party in this mountain city, using the offices of the National Indigenous Institute. The split government is the result of a disputed Aug. 21 gubernatorial election.

Many local governments are similarly divided. In Bachajon, near where Kanter was killed, two factions routinely drive each other out of the municipal offices--without benefit of elections. The ensuing violence ends with arrest warrants being issued for leaders on both sides, warrants that are never served.

Inside rebel-held territory, Zapatistas had stopped sending their children to school. Doctors were afraid to conduct routine vaccination campaigns. Rebel guards decided who could enter the area and who could not.

Chiapas residents want an end to the chaos. Many human rights activists, however, are concerned about Zedillo’s trying to restore order by using the federal police and the army.

“I am afraid that the law will be applied the way it always has been--against the poor,” Romo said.

Further, he charges that the government is using the military operation as an excuse to attack old enemies. The government has strongly denied such charges.

“In no instance have the actions of the federal police been used to intimidate or harass individuals or institutions outside the Zapatista National Liberation Army,” a government official said.

But Romo insisted, “There is also a low-intensity war of slander and generating terror.”

The alleged slander begins with Rafael Sebastian Guillen Vicente, the man the government has identified as rebel leader Subcommander Marcos. A communique signed by the mysterious guerrilla denies that he is Guillen Vicente.

In addition to arresting community activist Jorge Santiago Santiago in the town of Teopisca after Zedillo alleged that Santiago was one of the five leaders of the rebel group, federal police interrupted Sunday Mass there to question the priest, Javier Ruiz. Members of the congregation denied reports that worshipers had driven police away when they tried to arrest Ruiz and that he was in hiding. But they also said they did not know where he is or when he would return.

A barrage of news reports has also appeared criticizing controversial Bishop Samuel Ruiz, a longtime defender of Indian rights who played a key role in efforts to negotiate a peace agreement between the government and the rebels. The bishop’s enemies have long accused him of encouraging or even helping to organize the armed rebellion, a charge he has repeatedly denied.

Human rights organizations also charge that police illegally searched the offices here of the Coordinator of Non-Governmental Organizations for Peace.

“There is a general campaign of psychological warfare, of laying the groundwork for some kind of witch hunt,” said Medea Benjamin, a San Francisco-based human rights activist who is in Chiapas at the invitation of local civic groups.

But the most worrisome aspect of the attacks on civic leaders, Benjamin said, is that “if they are going to go after people who have international connections, who have lawyers, who live in cities, who know how to defend themselves, what does that mean for some poor peasant out in the jungle?”

That question has been asked constantly as the army blocks media access to former rebel strongholds.

“The actions of the federal police and the Mexican army have clearly been conducted in a way that avoids any harm or risk to the (civilian) population,” according to a statement from the Interior Ministry. The same statement, however, said that verification that soldiers and police have respected human rights will be left to the government’s human rights commission.

Soldiers at roadblocks have repeatedly said they have specific instructions forbidding human rights workers and journalists to enter. Even now that the government claims control of the area, reporters are permitted to enter only in small groups with army escorts.