PBI-Mexico accompanies the Peoples Front at media conference on the torture of PIM megaproject opponent Jaime Dominguez

On November 28, PBI-Mexico posted:

“On November 27 and 28, the Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project accompanies the Peoples Front of Morelos Puebla Tlaxcala in their press conferences about the case of Jaime Dominguez Perez, a survivor of torture.

The defender was arrested in September 2013 as part of a protest against the mega-project Project Integral Morelos (PIM). After several years of fighting for the recognition of this crime, in July 2023 the Human Rights Commission of the State of Morelos issued a recommendation to various state authorities recognizing acts of torture and their due reparation.

PBI calls on competent authorities to guarantee the right to defend human rights, ensuring non-repetition, comprehensive repair and the right to free expression and determination of peoples.”

The Peoples Front further explains:

“In the different territories of the Nahua indigenous peoples of the states of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala, the Morelos Integral Project, in the course of its construction, has violated in many ways and imposed the project on their territories. Through murder, torture, jail and repression of state police, federal police, military and strike groups. The PIM has been built on violence, grave violations of human rights and lawlessness.

On September 19, 2013, in the Colony el Algodonal in Cuautla, the neighbors of the place stopped the construction of the aqueduct (one of the components of the PIM). Morelos State Police in charge of Alicia Vázquez Luna, repel the people and encapsulate Jaime Dominguez Perez (member of the Front of the People in Defense of Land and Water. Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala), who was supporting the neighbors.

Jaime had been missing for 8 hours since his arrest, in which elements of the Morelos State Police tortured him, hitting him in the ears, face and ribs causing him severe injuries and hearing loss, in addition to keeping him handcuffed for all those hours and threatened him with death for ‘walking of revolting’.

We demand punishment for those who ordered, supervised and executed the operation as well as those who detained and tortured Jaime Dominguez. We demand that the use of torture end as an established practice on officers. We demand respect for the right to defend human rights and the repair of the damage caused by the Morelos Comprehensive Project through its cancellation.”

Their full post can be read here.

People’s Front opposes PIM megaproject

The PIM megaproject was built by the Spanish companies Abengoa, Elecnor and Enagas and the Italian company Bonatti.

In December 2021, Enagás and Elecnor sold their ownership of the pipeline to the Sydney, Australia-based Macquarie Group. Macquarie has offices in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver.

The People’s Front has also linked Toronto-based Alamos Gold to the PIM megaproject (its Esperanza Gold Project mine is situated in Morelos). In February 2022, that mine was sold to Vancouver-based Zacatecas Silver.

The Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project has accompanied the Peoples Front in the Defence of Water-Morelos, Puebla, Tlaxcala since 2020.