|
Sierra Club Calls for Release of Mexican Forest Defenders Indigenous Environmentalists Held On Trumped Up Charges Washington, DC: Today, the Sierra Club called for the immediate and unconditional release of Isidro Baldenegro Lopez and Hermenegildo Rivas Carrillo, two Mexican forest defenders wrongly jailed on trumped up charges. The Sierra Club is also calling for an investigation of the judicial state police involved in the two arrests, and for the Bush administration to take action under the White House Initiative on Illegal Logging to prompt their release. It has been one year since the two men of the Tarahumara, an indigenous Mexican people, were jailed after trying to stop illegal logging practices near their community in the Sierra Madre Mountains southwest of Chihuahua, Mexico. Baldenegro and Rivas were arrested and jailed by police under pressure from local government officials and narcotics traffickers who are logging an old growth forest that the Tarahumara rely on for subsistence. Baldnegro and Rivas are not the first victims in the efforts to protect Tarahumara's forests - Baldenegro's father was shot and killed a decade ago for organizing to stop the logging. "Excessive logging has already destroyed over ninety percent of the forest areas previously inhabited by the Tarahumara people," said Doug Hunt, Washington Representative of the Sierra Club's Human Rights and the Environment Program. "Mexico must put a permanent end to the illegal logging that threatens many of its indigenous communities." The Tarahumara have suffered for over thirty years under the corruption and illegal activities of local narcotics bosses in the Fontes family. Old-growth logging, profitable in itself, also clears land that drug lords can plant with marijuana and opium poppies. The Fontes' logging activities in Tarahumara were stopped in March 2003 by demonstrations organized by Isidro. However, through legal channels, the Fontes family was given permission in February 2004 to start logging again. The President's Initiative Against Illegal Logging, announced in July 2003, brought much needed visibility to the issues of illegal and conflict logging around the world. The Initiative offered support for developing countries against the illegal harvesting and sale of timber products, and promised to "fight corruption in the forest sector," and "protect forests and the livelihoods that depend upon them." However, the Bush administration and the initiative have done nothing to defend the human rights of environmentalists in developing countries who are often risking their live to protect their forests. And unfortunately a pattern seems to be emerging. The case of Baldenegro and Rivas is remarkably similar to the 1999 case of Rodolfo Montiel Flores and Teodoro Cabrera García who were also arrested, tried and convicted on trumped up charges, for trying to stop excessive logging by Boise-Cascade. The two were finally ordered released after an international outcry and the murder of their lawyer Digna Ochoa forced intervention by President Fox. However, appeals by the Sierra Club and many other environmental and human rights organizations to Fox and the local federal prosecutor for the release of Isidro and Hermenegildo have so far been unsuccessful "This is the second time in five years that the international human rights and environmental communities have mobilized globally to demand the release of logging activists in Mexico," Hunt continued. "The indigenous people of Mexico have the right to defend their forest without risking death or imprisonment. We think the Bush administration should support them." ### |
