Ayotzinapa: February 26, 2023 Open Letter to Arizona Senators Sinema and Kelly

 

TONATIERRA

Human Rights Commission

PO Box 24009  Phoenix, AZ 85074

www.tonatierra.org

 

Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema

3333 E. Camelback Rd, Suite 200

Phoenix, Arizona 85018

 

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly

2201 E. Camelback Rd, Suite 115

Phoenix, AZ 85016

 

February 26, 2023

Dear Arizona Senators Sinema and Kelly,

On September 24, 2021, we submitted a Freedom of Information Request along with the WATER PROTECTOR LEGAL COLLECTIVE requesting disclosure of records related to the case of the Forced Disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students on September 26, 2014, in Iguala Guerrero, Mexico.

On May 24, 2021, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador communicated he had received files from the United States regarding the investigation of the 2014 Ayotzinapa disappearances and subsequent criminal coverup by officials of the Mexican government. President Lopez Obrador received these files after a virtual meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris on May 7, 2021.  

The TONATIERRA Human Rights Commission has accompanied the parents and families of the 43 Ayotzinapa students for over seven years now in their attempts to bring accountability and justice to the case.

 

Although we have sent this message to both of your offices on December 26, 2021, via the email address provided on your website and the message has been confirmed to have been received, we have not had any substantive response from either of you regarding our request for assistance in terms of bringing to light the relevant information as outlined our initial FOI request.

 

We shall continue to follow up with your offices to arrange for a meeting to discuss the particulars of the human rights issues involved.

 

Sincerely,

Tupac Enrique Acosta

TONATIERRA

 

PRESS RELEASE

Comisión Permanente Ayotzinapa

TONATIERRA Submits Freedom of Information Request to the Biden administration for US government files on the investigation of the Forced Disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students missing since September 26, 2014, in Mexico

Phoenix, Arizona – Today a Freedom of Information Act request was formally submitted to the Biden Administration by TONATIERRA and the WATER PROTECTOR LEGAL COLLECTIVE soliciting disclosure of the files related to the US government’s investigation into the Forced Disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College missing since September 26, 2014.

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 February 26, 2023

US guns kill more people in Mexico than in the US, research reveals

TONATIERRA

Comisión de Derechos Humanos

PO Box 24009 Phoenix, AZ 85074

www.tonatierra.org

Contacto: Tupac
Enrique Acosta

chantlaca@tonatierra.org

 

26 febrero de 2023

 

Senadora de Arizona Kyrsten Sinema

3333 E. Camelback Rd, Suite 200

Fénix, Arizona 85018

 

Senador de Arizona Mark Kelly

2201 E. Camelback Rd, Suite 115

Fénix, Arizona 85018

 

Estimados Senadores Sinema y Kelly,

 

El 24 de septiembre de 2021 presentamos una Solicitud de Libertad de Información (FOI) junto con el COLECTIVO LEGAL PROTECTOR DEL AGUA solicitando la divulgación de antecedentes relacionados con el caso de la Desaparición Forzada de los 43 estudiantes de Ayotzinapa el 26 de septiembre de 2014, en Iguala Guerrero, México.

El 24 de mayo de 2021, el presidente mexicano, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, comunicó que había recibido archivos de Estados Unidos sobre la investigación de las desapariciones de Ayotzinapa en 2014 y el subsiguiente encubrimiento criminal por parte de funcionarios del gobierno mexicano. El presidente López Obrador recibió estos archivos luego de una reunión virtual con la Vicepresidenta Kamala Harris el 7 de mayo de 2021.

La Comisión de Derechos Humanos de TONATIERRA ha acompañado a los padres y familiares de los 43 estudiantes de Ayotzinapa desde hace más de siete años en su intento de llevar la rendición de cuentas y la justicia al caso.

Aunque enviamos este mensaje a sus dos oficinas el 26 de diciembre de 2021, a través de la dirección de correo electrónico proporcionada en su sitio web y se confirmó que se recibió el mensaje, no hemos recibido ninguna respuesta sustancial de ninguno de ustedes con respecto a nuestra solicitud por asistencia en términos de sacar a la luz la información relevante como se describe en nuestra solicitud inicial de FOI.

Haremos un seguimiento con sus oficinas para organizar una reunión para discutir los detalles de los problemas de derechos humanos involucrados.

Atentamente,

 

Tupac Enrique Acosta

TONATIERRA

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YouTube:

Solidaridad Internacional

Comisión Permanente Ayotzinapa

TONATIERRA

Phoenix, Arizona

On September 26, 2014 in the town of Iguala, Guerrero in Mexico, 43 students from the rural teacher preparation school of Ayotzinapa were Forcibly Disappeared by federal and local police agents of the Mexican state.  Six others were killed that night, including three students and three innocent bystanders shot and killed when the Mexican army attacked the bus the students were taking to Mexico City.

The 43 Ayotzinapa students were unarmed, they were on their way to participate in the commemoration of the massacre of the students in Tlaltelolco Square in 1968. Unknown to the students, was the fact that the bus they were on was also carrying a contraband load of heroin for delivery to the US, in Atlanta and Chicago.

 

The military and police agents were sent by the cartels of the narco-state in Mexico to recover the heroin, at any cost.

Now. eight years later, the parents, families, and the community of the Ayotzinapa continue to demand accountability and justice not only for the 43 Ayotzinapa students, but also for the tens of thousands of victims of killed and disappeared in Mexico under the shroud of the US backed “War on Drugs” and the US financed Plan Merida Mexico.

 

Today, the guilty parties to the crime of the Forced Disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students remain at large. In open collusion and complicity, the highest echelon of the Narco State in Mexico, the guilty parties who were facing formal court charges in Mexico and in the US, have escaped capture and detention, and after fleeing to Canada, are living in comfort with protection and political exile in Israel.

¡AYOTZINAPA!

¡We do not forget, we do not forgive!

They were taken alive, we want them back alive!

Wallmapuche

 

 

TONATIERRA: Minimum international legal standards underpinning the pillars of transitional justice

 

TONATIERRA

Submission to

Call for Input

by

Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation & guarantees of non-recurrence

Mr. Fabian Salvioli

15 January 2023

 

Minimum international legal standards underpinning the pillars of transitional justice

 

United Nations Human Rights Special Procedures

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

United Nations Office at Geneva

CH 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

 

DOWNLOAD PDF 

 

Introduction

 

In July of 1990 the First Continental Encounter of Indigenous Nations, Pueblos, and Organizations took place in Quito, Ecuador hosted by the Confederacy of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE). Nearly 400 Indigenous Peoples, representing 120 nations, tribes and organizations of the entire continent met for the first time to discuss their peoples' struggles for self-determination and strategize for a unified response to the 1992 International Jubilee celebrations commemorating and sanitizing the initial phase of colonization and genocide against the Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples the Great Turtle Island Abya Yala which continues today in 2023.

 

Despite the offensive denial of truth in the official histories, the Indigenous delegations emitted a call from Quito, intended to reflect upon what the 500 years of invasion had meant to us and to work with a renewed effort for our self-determination.  We determined to educate the people of the world, to celebrate that we had survived and that our cultures are still alive thanks to 500 years of resistance, rebellion, and regeneration. We collectively reaffirmed our commitment to formulate alternative strategies to realize the decolonization of our Original Nations, in harmony with Mother Earth.

 

From the Declaration of Quito, 1990:

 

“The existing nation states of the Americas, their constitutions and fundamental laws are judicial/political expressions that negate our socio-economic, cultural and political rights.

 

From this point in our general strategy of struggle, we consider it to be a priority that we demand complete structural change; change which recognizes the inherent right to self-determination through our own governments and through the control of our territories.”

 

This submission to the request for input regarding the minimum international legal standards of transitional justice underpinning the duties of States and the rights of victims is submitted on behalf of the Continental Commission Abya Yala, via our secretariat TONATIERRA which has served as the singular agent of continuity and communications for the continental commission since 1990.

 

1. Truth

 

None.

 

As was clarified in the declaration of Quito, 1990, and subsequently reaffirmed and consistently denounced in the second Continental Indigenous Encounter in 1993 in Temoaya, Mexico, and the following five continental Indigenous Summits of Abya Yala in Teotihuacan, Mexico (2000); Quito, Ecuador (2004); Iximché, Guatemala (2007); Puno, Peru (2009); Cauca, Colombia (2013); and then again in each Izcalli Abya Yala of 2020-2022, the so-called legal framework of justice and purported claims by the states for jurisdiction over the Indigenous Peoples is based on the nefarious LEGALOIDE construct of the Doctrine of Discovery of Christendom and the transfer of colonial jurisdiction via the Alexandrian Papal Bulls from the crown powers of Europe to the successor states of the Americas as they exist today.

 

Since colonization is a violation of international law since UNGA 1514 in 1960, and with the UN Human Rights Council adoption of Resolution 48/7 “Negative impact of the legacies of colonialism on the enjoyment of human rights” on 8 October 2021, the time has come to reveal the truth of how the UN system itself is guilty of perpetuating the regime of systematic discrimination in concept, policy, and practice against the collective rights of the Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples to transitional justice and self-determination as “peoples, equal to all other peoples…”.

 

2. Obstacles to Justice

Just as the principle of “Christian Discovery” was used to purportedly claim jurisdiction over the territories and nationality of the non-Christian Indigenous Peoples in 1492, today we see that the UN High Level Plenary Meeting of 2014, which is fraudulently called the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples has operated to the same effect at the global level.  This is due to the fact that all UN bodies are operating under the System Wide Action Plan which emerged from the outcome document of the 2014 High Level Plenary Meeting, which in turn pivots on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples UNDRIP (2007).

 

In similar manner as there existed the League of Nations before the UN, the UN Human Rights Council was preceded by the UN Human Rights Commission. In fact, it was the Sub Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities under the UN Human Rights Commission that requested Dr. Miguel Alfonso Martínez as Special Rapporteur to conduct the “Study on treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements between States and indigenous populations” which he presented in a final report in 1999.  The Martinez study of 1999 was in turn itself rooted in the recommendations of the 1982 Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations by Sr. Martínez Cobo. 

 

Significantly, the original resolution on this theme in 1987 by the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities was precise and definitive in identifying the Indigenous Treaty issues with the colonizing states as a category of international importance in its own right, and in its own light of evaluation apart from other agreements and other constructive arrangements. The original resolution by the Sub-Commission was titled “Study on treaties concluded between indigenous peoples and States”. 

 

In 1994, the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities working on the Draft United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples approved the Original Text of the declaration. This Original Text was the product of many years of deliberation - a process that allowed for a degree of meaningful and decisive participation of Indigenous Peoples from around the world.

 

That same year, a move was made to redraft the Original Declaration under the Working Group on the Draft Declaration (WGDD). Debate continued for eleven more years. Then, in September 2004, the WGDD’s Chairperson-Rappoteur, Louis Enrique Chavez, announced his intention to present his own version to the Human Rights Commission. This proposal was challenged on November 29, 2004, by a five-day prayer fast/hunger strike by six Indigenous delegates to the WGDD at UN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

 

With the support and solidarity of Indigenous Peoples from around the world, the Indigenous delegates demanded that the Original Text, which the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities had approved, be recognized as the only legitimate version of the declaration and be advanced as such on the floor of the UN General Assembly.  Representatives of the UN Commission on Human Rights made assurances that, if no consensus could be achieved by the end of the 2004 session of the Working Group, the only version of the declaration that would be submitted to the full Commission would be the Sub-Commission Text as approved in 1994. With these assurances, the hunger strike/prayer fast came to an end.

 

This agreement was subsequently violated and then betrayed.

 

3. Reparations

 

Here is the original article 36 as approved by the Sub-Commission and supported by the Indigenous delegations in Geneva since 2004, and which still today serves as the fundamental UNDERPINNING PRINCIPLE of restorative justice vis-à-vis the UN system of states and the Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of Mother Earth.

 

Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities

Original Sub-Commission Text

Article 36

 

Indigenous peoples have the right to the recognition, observance and enforcement of treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements concluded with States or their successors, according to their original spirit and intent, and to have States honour and respect such treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements. Conflicts and disputes which cannot otherwise be settled should be submitted to competent international bodies agreed to by all parties concerned.

 

4. Guarantees of non-recurrence

 

Prior to the convening of the General Assembly High Level Plenary Meeting in 2014, a UN Indigenous Preparatory Meeting was held in Alta, Norway from June 10-12, 2013. The following intervention from the floor of the Alta Conference was presented by the representative of TONATIERRA:

 

1)  We call for the restitution of the primary source materials and testimony that was lent to the United Nations system as fundamental to the evidence in document form of the systemic (system to system) nature of the legal relationships between the Nations of Indigenous Peoples and the member states of the UN system for the purpose of the Treaty Study conducted by Dr. Miguel Alfonso Martinez of Cuba.

 

Such delivery, should be initial act of good faith in terms of the continuing process of systemic documentation among the Nations of Indigenous Peoples and the UN system prior to and as a necessary act of condition to allow for the full and effective participation of the Indigenous Peoples in the High Level Plenary Meeting on an equal basis and without systemic discrimination in the process of producing the Final Outcome Document of the High Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly 2014.

 

 

5. Memorialization

 

This intervention was never recorded in the reports from Alta, much less integrated into the Alta Outcome document, nor considered by the UN member states at their 2014 High Level Plenary Meeting, fraudulently called the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples.

 

 

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NAHUACALLI

Embassy of Indigenous Peoples

 

Secretariat:

TONATIERRA

PO Box 24009

Phoenix, Arizona 85074

tonal@tonatierra.org

WWW.TONATIERRA.ORG

 

Submitted by Tupac Enrique Acosta, Yaotachcauh

PRONOUNCEMENT OF THE ENCOUNTER OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF ABYA YALA

For Self-Determination and Decolonization

June 05 – 10, 2022

Ancestral Territories of the Tongva/Gabrielino Nations

Los Angeles, California, [USA]

 

Los Angeles, CA – Gathering in independent formation as a continental alliance of Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala [Americas], the Continental Commission Abya Yala has convened in Los Angeles for a four-day gathering to advance a collective geopolitical agenda in defense of right of self-determination of Indigenous Peoples. 

 

Calling for the implementation of the international protocols and procedures for decolonization in the hemisphere as Indigenous Peoples, equal to all other peoples, the Encounter of Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala has denounced as illegitimate and discriminatory the continued normalization of the doctrine of “Internal Colonization” of Indigenous Peoples by the states of the Americas under the so called “Blue Water Rule”.