Mexican President Urged to Free ConservationistsCarrying placards and photos of jailed Mexican farmers who fought to stop logging, about 50 activists gathered outside the US Chamber of Commerce Thursday night where Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo presented a speech.
''Environmental activism is not a crime,'' said Alejandro Queral an organiser with the Sierra Club, an national advocacy group based here. ''This is President Zedillo's chance to show the international community that the Mexican government respects the rights of activists to protect the environment.''
Last week, 40 members of Congress sent a letter to Zedillo asking him to ''immediately and unconditionally'' release the two farmers, who had organised peasants to block roads after loggers began felling virgin forests near their village in the mountains north of Acapulco.
The efforts of Rodolfo Montiel Flores and Teodoro Cabrera Garcia, slowed the logging somewhat but it infuriated wealthy landowners. In May 1999 they were arrested and reportedly beaten and tortured by members of the 40th Infantry Battalion of the Mexican Army.
According to testimony by the prisoners and Amnesty International, Montiel and Cabrera were then threatened at gunpoint and forced into confessing involvement with an armed opposition group and illegal possession of weapons.
Rights activists believe that these charges were created to imprison Montiel and Cabrera for their environmental activism.
''Montiel and Cabrera's only 'crime' was to protect the forests by protesting the clear-cut logging of Mexico's old-growth forests.
The Mexican Embassy here did not have an immediate comment on the allegations and protests. In the past, government spokesman have said they were unaware of the case but that they would investigate.
Sierra Club's Queral, who visited Montiel in prison in April, said both prisoners have lost weight and have been refused medical care on several occasions.
''They are forced to sleep on the cold floor of the shower rooms and treated inhumanely,'' he said.
Amnesty International recently declared the two conservationists 'prisoners of conscience.'
''These serious allegations of human rights abuse and worsening medical conditions demand attention,'' said Andrew Miller, the acting Americas director of the US division of Amnesty International (AIUSA).
The plight of the two farmers received international attention in April when they were awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, a 125,000 dollar cash award given by the California-based Goldman Foundation to environmental crusaders.
Montiel's activism began when he became concerned for his crops when logging in the mountains of Guerrero began disturbing the forest watershed and drastically decreasing the region's water supply and quality. With only a first grade education, he wrote letters to federal officials that laws were being violated.
When the letters were never answered, Montiel formed an environmental organisation, Campesinos Ecologistas or Farmer Ecologists, and his activities led US-based Boise Cascade to abandon the logging it began in 1995.
But his group - called an 'eco-guerrilla' organisation by the State Attorney General's Office - has infuriated wealthy land owners and the generals at a nearby garrison.
Gunman have killed several members of Montiel Flores' organisation. ''We aren't against anybody ... but hope that everybody will look out for the ecology, because to damage the ecology is to do damage to ourselves,'' he said in a statement distributed by the Goldman Foundation.
The Human Rights Center Agustin Pro Juarez in Mexico has taken on the legal defence of both Montiel and Cabrera. But since this organisation took on the case, its members have received several death threats. In August 1999, the co-ordinator of the Law Program, Digna Ochoa y Placido, was kidnapped for several hours by unidentified assailants and beaten.
''American timber companies like Boise-Cascade have fled the United States to come to Mexico where they destroy our forests,'' said Ochoa y Placido on a recent visit to the United States.
Queral said the imprisonment of Montiel and Cabrera is part of a pattern of intimidation against environmentalists in the state of Guerrero.
In June 1995, members of the state judicial police killed 17 unarmed farmers near the village of Aguas Blancas in Guerrero. They had gathered to protest against the governor's decision to resume logging in the area.
This past March, another member of Farmer Ecologists, Maximino Marcial Jaimes, was reportedly abducted by members of a paramilitary group, says Amnesty International, which has expressed concern for his safety.
Without someone to speak out on behalf of the ecology of Guerrero, the forests are beginning to disappear in the region, says Queral. The campaign to free Montiel and Cabrera, is part of a larger joint effort by the Sierra Club and Amnesty International USA to defend environmental activists threatened by governments and corporate interests around the world.
With a combined membership of more than 1 million volunteers across the United States, the two organisations have worked together in previous campaigns to protect environmental activists in Nigeria, Russia, and Myanmar, formerly Burma.
''Someone must stand up and speak on behalf of these earth defenders,'' said Queral.