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CONSTANT AGGRESSION AGAINST COMMUNITY RADIO STATIONS

To the community communication media
To the alternative media
To the people of Oaxaca, Mexico and the world

In recent months a new wave of aggression on the part of the federal and state governments has begun throughout Mexico and is focused on community and social communication projects in the communities, suburbs and municipalities. Repression and intimidation has been visited on those who, engaged in alternative radio work and diffusion of information aim to inform the population of the reality of the political situation, of the environment and traditional organization and so revive that culture that moulds the identity of every place that neo-liberalism wishes to exterminate.

In the last two months there have been 4 registered cases of repression against alternative, community and social communications media. In Oaxaca, the blockade of Radio Planton re-started from the teacher’s demand in June for sectional relief and the liberation of political prisoners, a blockade that is currently total on 92.1 and 103.1 FM.

In the same way, the community radio station in Zaachila on 94.1FM “the voice of the people that awakes and rises up” has been interfered with and slandered with false accusations of generating and fostering violence in the town. This comes as a result of informing the community of the true events of 20th June, when the criminal and despot Ulises Ruiz Ortiz visited Zaachila. The station revealed that the person using firearms against the population was Natalio Péres Tomás, the father of the current PRI Municipal President Noé Pérez Martínez. It also reported that it was this same President who began the confrontation by throwing rocks at the demonstrators and who had hired thugs to provoke a confrontation with those people unwilling to permit Ulises Ruiz to enter their community. To exact his revenge Noe Pérez, with the support of the state government and Office of Communication and Transport (SCT), is attempting to shut down Zaachila Radio through threats in state newspapers.

Examples of these attacks are those suffered by the compañeros of Radio Ñomndaa “The Water’s Word”, a community radio station broadcasting on 101.1FM in Xochistlahuaca, Guerrero, where the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) caused the burning of its transmission equipment and in a similar way, Radio Tierra y Libertad of Monterrey that operated in a the suburbs, was closed and dismantled by elements of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) and the SCT.

It is plain to see that these aggressions against the entire community communication project, in these cases the radio stations, form part of a deliberate campaign of persecution and hostility against those spaces that revive and regenerate culture, that denounce injustice and the violence of the state, that spread free determination to the pueblos, barrios and schools, and who do not stay silent. These are the motives of those attempting to close down our spaces of communication.

For this reason we are making a call to be watchful of any aggression against any process of free and community information and to offer our solidarity in whatever way we can. We therefore invite the different radios and communication initiatives of Oaxaca to a Preparatory Meeting on Saturday 2nd August in the auditorium of the Section 22 building (Armenta y López 221 col. centro) at 10:00 with a view to organising the First Assembly of the Free and Community Radios of Oaxaca.

For the construction of a different communication for the people.

Radio Plantón, Zaachila Radio, Radio Arcoiris, Comunicación V.O.C.A.L