Women in Chiapas

Sex violence in Chiapas

(a-infos, 20.9.2001)

In relation to the latest examples of sexual violence in Chiapas - especially in the indigenous zones - the endorsers of this announcement demand:

THAT THE STATE, ACCOMPLISHING ITS NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL RESPONSABILITIES, TAKES EFFECTIVE MEASURES THAT PUTS AN END TO THE RAPES AND THE SEXUAL AGGRESSIONS; ARRESTS AND PUNISHES THE RESPONSABLES; GUARANTEES THE SECURITY AND FREEDOM OF THE WOMEN; SHOWS RESPECT TO WOMEN AND OFFER JUSTICE, WHICH IS ACCORDING TO THE VICTIMS RIGTHS.

Through more than 10 years, we - women in Chiapas - have worked, struggled, announced and made compromises to fight against the violence against women.
In anger and pain we have demonstrated every time an indigenous or not indigenous woman have suffered from sexist, irrational, terrorist and surprising violence, that is a part of the relations and the culture violence, being imposed by state and society. Nevertheless the violence has not been stopped - on the contrary. Impunity the law intensive warfare and the built-in violent dynamics of the neoliberal system reproduces it even more.

In the latest weeks we have again been witnessing more cases of sexual violation in our region. Violence, impunity and the frequency have upset us in our daily life, day and night our lives have been filled with fear and insecurity, limiting our freedom and mobility, as well in the cities as on the countryside. It has made our participation in any activity difficult, being private or public. It has meant that we can not work as the teachers, we can not be neighbours, young, old -because we are the victims of the sexual aggressions and rapes.

We can not feel safe working as nurses, run business or any other activity, because we are being assaulted on the roads. We can not be activists, because we are being threatened that either we or our children will be violated. We can not be tourists in other parts of Mexico, because we are the victims of psycopaths, like the one that within the latest days has confessed to have committed more than 100 sexual assaults and has fled at least twice from prison. We can not be indigenous, mestizas, children or handicapped, because we women have no real access to justice, peace, dignity or respect for our rigths as human beings to integrity and freedom.

The context of war and low intensity warfare in Chiapas, accelerates the violence against women. The so-called "democratic change" is not mean for us - it is just speaches, that steals our words, and turn them against us.

Today, like yesterday, the scandalous announcemens of violations of women accumulates, generally not being punished. Today, like always down through history we have no importance to justice, not even the cases of murder related to sexual aggression. - at the outmost converted into statistic numbers that justify the existence of burocracy of an insensible, unefficient and sexist legal systeme.

Violence against women is a assumable cost to the systeme and even being programmed by the politics of the state, like the example of the low intensity warfare, including actions directed especifically against women, shows. Prostitution,the trafficing of children and women, the exploitation of illegal imigrants,, the establishing of a "floating" economy, the contamination and profanation of water springs, ecological reservates, and of sacred places, as well as the permanent thread represented by the army to the communities and the sexual abuse of women and children. In relation to the new circle of violence we suffer in Chiapas, we demand that the government accomplishes its obligation to put an end to the violence against women and the impunity of the aggressors.

Now is enough of women being converted into objects of war and sexual agressions, now is enough with impunity, the injustice, unequality, the intolerance,the abuses and the violence. Today, like yesterday and like always, we reclaim justice for the victims, for the violated, for all of us, who continue breaking down walls of silence and indifference.

Among the latest examples of violence we shall mention the happenings lately in Marques de Comlas, where women where the most harmed among the victims - they were terrorized, driven away and violated physically by the police forces in an action, that has been excused with the necesity of "reestablishing the order" after a kidnapping of public employees by a small peasant organization. The violence spread in the region without actually managing to arrest the responsables of the kidnapping. Today, again we women call for everybody to announce energetically and publically the latest examples of aggression and violence against women in Chiapas. We call for a mobilization in order to stop this new circle of aggressions and to destroy in all posible ways the culture of violence and impunity for the guilties. The state and the gobernment of Chiapas have to accumplish the compromise of governing with women and for women. They have to give us legal protection and to act immediately, erradicating the institucional and sexual violence, that ambushes us permanently.

STOP THE VIOLENCE SECURITY AND FREEDOM FOR WOMEN STOP IMPUNITY RESPECT AND JUSTICE FOR THE VICTIMS

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