Besieged For Three Weeks, Mexico Journalists Keep Newspaper Running

by Diego Cevallos

(IPS) MEXICO CITY -- In the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, where activists say human rights violations and impunity are the norm, 31 employees of a newspaper that has been critical of the local government have been blockaded inside their building for three weeks.

The 31 reporters and editors at Noticias, Oaxaca's biggest newspaper, have been trapped in their offices by an armed mob that allegedly includes plainclothes police officers.

Nevertheless, they continue to put out the newspaper, using the Internet to send material to a secret location outside the building to be printed.

The argument of those who are besieging the workers is that the newspaper is on strike and should, as a result, stop publishing.

"We are asking the president (Vicente Fox) to intervene in order to put an end to the impunity, but nothing has been done," Noticias reporter Octavio Velez told IPS by telephone from inside the building.

He compared the local authorities in Oaxaca, one of Mexico's poorest states, to those of a colonial "viceroyalty," where traditional political bosses do whatever they please, regardless of legal restrictions, the local institutions are at their service, and freedom of the press is continuously violated.

While political pluralism is making progress in much of Mexico, authorities in Oaxaca, who belong to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) -- which ruled the country from 1929 to 2000 -- squelch all criticism and attack anyone who dares to raise a dissident voice, says the All Rights for All Network, which links a number of human rights groups in Mexico.

Reporters Without Borders, the Inter-American Press Association and Amnesty International have issued statements and open letters in the past few weeks on the situation in Noticias, a newspaper that has been circulating for 29 years.

According to the Noticias employees, the blockade is orchestrated by local authorities in the state of Oaxaca, which has been ruled by the PRI for seven decades.

"Here we are, we don't have much food or water and we're sleeping on the floor, but the newspaper continues to come out," said Velez.

He told the press earlier that the mob outside was blocking efforts to bring in food.

Members of the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC) -- a trade union with ties to the PRI, and to which the newspaper's employees' union is affiliated -- declared that the paper was on strike and surrounded the building.

The demonstrators are demanding a 25 percent raise for all Noticias workers as well as a 400 percent increase in social benefits.

But the besieged reporters say they were never consulted about the demand for a raise that is so large that no union in Mexico would even dare proposing it.

A majority of the daily's more than 100 workers do not recognize those who are organising the "strike" as their leaders, and say they do not agree with the demands that have been set forth, said Velez, who also said he has not seen one single Noticias worker among the demonstrators.

Nevertheless, Oaxaca labor authorities said the measure taken by CROC was legal.

"The strike is just one more strategy to block our criticism and our work," said Velez.

Four years ago, then Oaxaca governor Jose Murat, one of the leaders of the most conservative wing of the PRI, tried to purchase Noticias, but the paper's owners declined the offer.

Since then, the publication has suffered several reprisals, such as the Oaxaca government's refusal to purchase space in the newspaper for official advertising -- an important source of income -- the theft of entire editions, and the occupation of Noticias warehouses by groups of unidentified persons.

But Noticias has not stopped publishing.

The workers who have been trapped inside the building since mid-June receive reports from journalists outside, and thus put together the newspaper, which has a circulation of around 20,000 and is printed elsewhere.

The situation "restricts press freedom and leaves citizens vulnerable...by limiting their means of being duly informed," said the Inter-American Press Association.

Reporters Without Borders said the "strike" paralysing Noticias is "the act of people external to the paper and is just a means used by the local authority to silence it."

The London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International called on the Fox administration to take urgent action to guarantee the security of the 31 press workers barricaded inside the building, who it said had been threatened and intimidated by the alleged "strikers."

In an open letter to Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) expressed its "deep concern" for the safety of the newspaper's 31 employees since the members of CROC "set up camp outside the newspaper...blocking its entrances and exits."

It noted that while the demonstrators claimed to be "striking for a wage increase...Noticias employees interviewed by CPJ said that the demonstrators have no connection to the publication, that the actual staff opposes this 'strike,' and that this ongoing blockade is an effort to suppress publication of the newspaper."

The CPJ also reported that "State police stationed outside have not intervened to allow Noticias workers to come and go freely."

The Collective for Democracy in Oaxaca, which represents 50 human rights groups, teachers' unions, and indigenous and women's rights organizations, said that since Ruiz took office in December, conditions in the state have been similar to those of a "state of siege."

The Collective says human rights are systematically violated in the state, freedom of the press is not respected, and the legislative and judicial branches answer to the state government.

As in the neighboring states of Guerrero and Chiapas, most of Oaxaca's 3.2 million people are poor. In all three states, many of the worst traditions of the "old Mexico" are still alive, like corruption, repression and intolerance of dissent, said political analyst Miguel Granados.

On Mar. 18, 2004, then governor Murat reported that the vehicle in which he and his bodyguards were riding was fired at, allegedly by his detractors.

The investigation by the attorney-general's office, however, found that there was no attempt on Murat's life, but merely a shoot-out between his bodyguards, who later altered the evidence to make it look like an outside attack.

Long before the legal investigation, Noticias reported evidence that the alleged "attack" against the governor was a farce, which apparently outraged Murat.

The incident further fuelled the local government's anger against the newspaper, which in spite of threats, robberies and now a three-week blockade continues to be published daily.