Friends of Brad Will demand Justice in Oaxaca on the 2 year Anniversary of his Murder

Friends of Brad Will gathered at the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco on Monday, October 27th, on the 2nd anniversary of Brad Will's murder, to remember him and the people of Oaxaca and to issue a statement of demands to the Mexican Consulate. We also remember Emilio Alfonso Fabien and Eudocia Olivera Diaz who were also killed on October 27, 2006, and we remember the many other activists in Oaxaca who have been unjustly arrested, killed, threatened, and tortured under the repressive regime of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. This week is also the 2 year anniversary of the PFP invading Oaxaca and crushing the movement, though the struggle, like the memory, lives on.
Though at first security guards would not talk to us, we were eventually allowed to pass our demands on to a person there, who said he would pass our demands on to people in Mexico and to the powers at the consulate. We lit candles for Brad and those killed and harassed in Oaxaca and left our signs there. We will continue to be in solidarity with the people of Oaxaca and of Mexico who are fighting for freedom and real democracy, and we will do all we can to make sure the innocent APPO members arrested for Brad’s murder be freed and found innocent.

We would like to continue to do actions and events concerning Brad Will and Mexico Solidarity. Contact Harmony at oharmony [at] gmail.com if you are interested or if you are doing similar work already.

It is still important to e-mail the PGR (Mexico's Federal Attorney General's office) directly at http://www.pgr.gob.mx/Servicios/mail/plantilla.asp?mail=1 and demand that the APPO members who were outrageously arrested for Brad Will's murder be freed and found innocent and that the real murderers, who are government officials and police, be held accountable.

Background:
Bradley Roland Will, a 36-year-old Indymedia journalist and activist from New York, was killed on October 27th, 2006 while filming unrest in Oaxaca state, where protesters had been fighting for months to oust Gov. Ulises Ruiz for alleged electoral fraud.

When Brad was killed, the people photographed (by Brad's own camera) firing guns at the protesters were police, police commanders, and operatives and bodyguards for the PRI party, including Pedro Carmona, Able Santiago Zarate aka "El Chino," Juan Carlo Soriano aka "El Chapulin," Commander Manuel Aguilar Coello, and Juan Sumano.

However, despite reports from the National Commission on Human Rights, and Reporters Without Borders, the government has been ignoring this key evidence and on October 16th, 2008, they arrested innocent APPO activists, including Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno, Hugo Colmenares Leyva, and Octavio Perez Perez.

Meanwhile, the Merida Initiative (aka Plan Mexico) is being negotiated, providing at least $1.6 billion in US armament, training, and resources to the same police and military forces that killed Brad and many other activists and journalists in Oaxaca, Mexico, and Central America under the pretense of stopping narco-trafficking. Already the weapons have been used in massacres and repression of activists in Morelos and Chiapas.

We demand that Brad Will's real killers be arrested, that the false charges be dropped, and that rather than funding the forces that killed Brad through Plan Mexico and the corrupt government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, we instead support an end to impunity and work towards justice and freedom for Brad Will and the people of Oaxaca and Mexico.

For more information, check out:

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2008/10/mexicos-national-human-rights-commission-blames-plan-mexico-appo-ar

and http://www.friendsofbradwill.org/