** Hundreds also pray for other prisoners, adherents to the Sixth
By: Hermann
Bellinghausen
San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas,
June 19, 2013
With a Catholic mass at the side of the road to
Ocosingo, and an impressive march around prison number 5 where Alberto Patishtán
Gómez is imprisoned, hundreds of people, the majority indigenous from El Bosque,
took advantage of another infamous anniversary (the thirteenth since the Tzotzil
professor was incarcerated) to demand his immediate freedom and to send a
message of companionship and solidarity to Alberto and his prisoner compañeros,
also adherents to the Sixth.
“It is not the struggle of one man alone, but of an
entire people,” said the El Bosque parish priest, Magdaleno Sánchez Ruiz. His
counterpart Marcelo Pérez, from Simojovel, demanded “Patishtán’s freedom in the
name of God.”
“We hope that the government does what it must do, which
is to free him. It is not a favour. It is a demand for justice,” the
organization Pueblo Creyente (Believing People) stated. “If there is no justice,
the people have to rise up and cry out, even the rocks have to
shout.”
Inside the prison, the prisoners of The Voice of El
Amate and those in Solidarity with the Voice of El Amate also demonstrated and
prayed for their freedom. From there, Alberto Patishtán sent a handwritten
message to the people who filled the car park and the entrance: “The reason for
my arrest was because I was on the side of the poor, the oppressed, the hungry
and those who have nothing,” said the teacher, a native of El Bosque, currently
the most important prisoner of conscience in the country, who has unleashed a
significant international movement for his liberation.
“I do not regret having helped my poor brothers, on the
contrary, I feel happy about having fulfilled my duties a little”, Patishtán
added.
Once the religious ceremony and the solidarity messages
were finished, such as the one from the Peoples United for the Defense of
Electric Energy in the Northern Zone, those in attendance walked around the Los
Llanos Prison, making the guards, today reinforced by many others, very nervous.
This unprecedented action, with a banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe at the
front, surely enabled the prisoners to hear the voices from outside demanding
their freedom: “Patishtán, your friends are here.”
Professor Patishtán continues to gain important friends.
His defense said that soon he will have a visit from the recognized US Latino
leader Baldemar Velázquez, who is considered an heir of the thinking of César
Chávez. He is now the Vice President of the important AFL-CIO union, and for
years he presided over the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC, its initials
in Spanish).
Today, time runs against Patishtán’s enemies: those
politicians from the local power system who have systematically prevented his
liberation for unclear reasons, without caring how much the demand for his
freedom has now been legitimized, based on the the conviction that he has spent
13 years behind bars for no reason.
------------------------------Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Thursday, June 20, 2013
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/
English translation by the Chiapas
Support Committee for the: International Zapatista Translation Service, a
collaboration of the: Chiapas Support Committee, California, Wellington
Zapatista Support Group, UK Zapatista Solidarity Network
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