national
farmers union
Mexican farm leaders continue to organize farmers in the fight for better living conditions, knowing that they could be assassinated at any time for doing so. National Farmers Union President, Nettie Wiebe, recently returned from a meeting with the leadership of four Mexican farm organizations and has grave concerns about the on-going human rights abuses of farmers in the countryside.
" I am appalled at the violence and oppression which my Mexican counterparts are subject to," declares Wiebe. "I think it is urgent that Canadian business and government relations with Mexico start to take serious account of this instead of treating it with a 'business as usual attitude.'"
The NFU has been working with the Mexican National Union of Autonomous Peasant Oraganizations, UNORCA. In the last few months, three UNORCA farm leaders have been assassinated.
Last July, Alberto Alonso, who had previously met with a group of NFU farmers, was found dead in a prison cell severely beaten and with three bullet wounds in his side and back. The police report cites he asphyxiated on his own vomit.
In January, Antonio Gomez Flores, brother of UNORCA's Executive Co-ordinator, was killed in a "mysterious" car accident. After much public pressure and numerous reports in the Mexican press, the government has launched an investigation into his death.
And last month, Arreola Presente Baltazar, an UNORCA leader who had hosted NFU farmers in his house for meals and discussions, was in a bar when a man walked up and shot him in the head.
Wiebe says this violence is happening to peasant farm leaders in some other parts of the world also. But it is especially acute in Canada's NAFTA trading partner, Mexico.
"The recent trip of Team Canada to Mexico to negotiate new commercial agreements seems to have overlooked key issues of human rights violations and social problems in that country," states Wiebe. "This is an affront to our social and democratic ideals for which Canada is known around the world."
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