PHM-Exch> Chiapas action alert Mexico

[Claudio Schuftan]

   From:    jefeconant at gmail.com


Chiapas: REDD Alert--Urgent Action Needed
To sign alert, send name, organization (if any), country and email to:
contact at globaljusticeecology.org and please read the full action alert
below.
Medical Services in Amador Hernández, Chiapas Withdrawn in Advance of REDD+

Introduction: two staff members of Global Justice Ecology Project visited
the region of Amador Hernández, Chiapas, in late March, as accredited
journalists. They made this trip to document the impacts of emerging forest
protection policies and carbon credit plans, including REDD (Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and to draw the
connections between these policies and any actual or potential abuses of
human and community rights. The connections, if one seeks them out, are
clear, and we will report on them in the coming weeks.
At the request of the community assembly of Amador Hernández, Global Justice
Ecology Project is circulating the communiqué and sign-on letter,
below. Both the communiqué and the letter were written by the community.
We hope you will respond by signing on to the action alert after the
communiqué below, to ask that medical services and the human right to health
be restored to this community, and that threats to their territorial
sovereignty cease without delay.

Communiqué from Amador Hernández, Chiapas: (sign on letter follows)
We, the residents of the Amador Hernández region in Chiapas, well-known for
its extraordinary biological richness, and is the site of historic
resistance by indigenous peoples, denounce that the illegal threats by the
bad government to expel us, culturally and physically, from our territories,
have moved from words to deeds.
Our opposition to the theft of our territory,  our rejection of the
unilateral delimiting of the agrarian border of the Lacandona Community
demanded by investors in projects associated with the REDD+ Project; our
refusal to accept the conservationist programs of “payment for environmental
services” and “productive land reconversion,” and our decision to reinitiate
a process of self-determined community health based in our traditional
medicine, together have aroused the arrogance of the bad government,
motivating them to advance a “new” counterinsurgency strategy to undermine
our resistance.
The strategy has consisted in an “administrative” withdrawal of health and
medical services to our communities.  Shipments of medical supplies have
been drastically reduced, and halted altogether since last November, and
much of the medicine we have left is now expired. Since last September we
have received no vaccines and no insulin. And, as if it were a message,
during this entire period the only pharmaceuticals they have continued to
send, and which now fill the shelves of our abandoned health clinics, are
birth control medications.
We have sent letters and more letters to the supervisor of Health District
 asking that medical services be restored. We have received no answer.
The deaths of children and old people in hospitals where the majority arrive
only to die, began in May. If it had not been for the reaction of our
communities, who organized to buy the most urgently needed medicines, for
the support of our traditional remedies, and for the solidarity of medics
and healthworkers from civil society, today the region of Amador Hernández
would be suffering hundreds of grave illnesses and dozens of deaths.
The war of power continues. For the indigenous peoples, who have freely and
bravely decided to walk our own destiny on a different path from that of the
political regime and the economic system that turns everything into
merchandise and thievery, the bad government sends illness and slow death,
and projects that fortify intercommunity conflicts, paid for now by the
resources associated with  REDD+. And all in the name of service to
humanity.
No to the commodification of our Mother Earth! Yes to the right to health,
and to life, and to our indigenous culture!

Please sign on to the community’s letter to Mexican officials (sign on link
below letters)
Letter to High-ranking Officials of the Mexican Federal Government and the
Government of Chiapas
 WE ASK:
• That you reestablish the withdrawn health services, under the terms and
conditions set by the affected communities, acting within their rights
granted by the law, in order to prevent further aggressions;
• That you make public the legal reasoning behind this inhumane affront;
• That you sanction those responsible, and those complicit.
Of the Secretary of Agrarian Reform, WE ASK:
• That you order a halt to the delimiting of the Lacandon Community Zone (la
brecha lacandona), until you have the consent of all of the neighboring
communities that will be affected, and thus avoid conflicts between our
communities;
• That you cease sending your employees to the region of Amador Hernández to
use lies to attempt to convince people to participate in the FANAR Program
(previously known as PROCEDE);
Of the Governor of Chiapas WE ASK:
• That you suspend the state REDD+ Project in the Lacandon Community Zone,
as it constitutes a counterinsurgency plan that promotes conflicts between
neighboring communities;
• That you stop lying to the indigenous peoples regarding the
climate-related objectives of the REDD+ Project in Chiapas, and declare its
true purpose: to conserve and recuperate biodiversity in the areas of
greatest biological wealth in order to turn it over to the control and
exploitation of transnational interests;
Of the officials of the Interior Ministries, both Federal and State, WE ASK:
• That you prevent any attacks, threats, or unconstitutional actions that
could be directed in any way toward people or civil society groups who,
through their work of solidarity, support the promotion of health in the
communities of the region of Amador Hernández.
THE HUMAN COMMUNITY NEITHER SUPPORTS NOR ACCEPTS THAT THE FRUITS OF THE
EARTH BE GIVEN TO SOME AT THE COST OF THE SUFFERING OF OTHERS.
To sign alert, send name, organization (if any), country and email to:
contact at globaljusticeecology.org  <contact at globaljusticeecology.org>
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