viernes, 29 de diciembre de 2006

Home safe for now: Bernadita Ortiz Bautista


Bernadita Ortiz Bautista, Pablo Ortiz's wife, is home safe for now in San Juan Diego FNIC after her release on December 24. Every thirty days she is required to travel two hours to the city of Oaxaca to check in with authorities and sign paperwork. Bernadita is just beginning the long legal process of proving her innocence against accusations she was a part of violent property destruction in Oaxaca City on November 25, 2006. According to Bernadita and other witnesses we talked to, 24 APPO supporters from La Mixteca were detained and beaten in a bus terminal as they waited to board a bus to return to Huajuapan de Leon. Paramilitaries had just burned a bus headed out of the city from that terminal. The bus drivers locked the gates to the terminal to protect passengers from the chaos outside. Police busted down the doors and proceeded to beat the women, men and children inside. They were then transferred to the zocalo, put in a local jail and eventually flown to a federal prison in Nayarit. Bernadita says she was beaten several times in the process of arriving to Nayarit and authorities never told her why she was being detained or where she was being transported. Legal activists worry that Bernadita and other APPO political prisoners could be re-detained at any time.

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