Mexico deputies moot amnesty for jailed ecologists
Reuters, Copyright 2000
November 2, 2000
MEXICO CITY - Mexican Green Party legislators on Tuesday proposed an amnesty for two jailed peasant activists who say their crime was to oppose logging in the southern state of Guerrero.
Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera were jailed last year for seven and 10 years respectively on marijuana and gun charges. Earlier this year Montiel was awarded a prestigious $125,000 environmental prize by the San Francisco-based Goldman foundation.
Mexico's Green Party (PVEM) bench in the lower house of Congress proposed giving the two amnesty and urged the other benches to back the proposal. Global rights watchdog Amnesty International and U.S. environmental group the Sierra Club on Tuesday condemned the rejection by a Mexican judge of new evidence from Danish doctors indicating the activists were tortured into making confessions that they grew marijuana and owned illegal arms.
Amnesty and other rights groups consider the two peasants to be prisoners of conscience, jailed on trumped up charges for defending the environment. "There are plenty of elements to suggest it (the case) was a reprisal for having touched powerful economic interests," the Green Party's proposal said. The party has 17 seats in the 500-member legislature.
President-elect Vicente Fox won a July 2 general election, heading a coalition of the Green Party and conservative National Action Party. The case is seen by rights groups as a litmus test for the new government, which comes to power on Dec. 1.