The Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) has joined with members of the Union of Mexican Jurists in a "Popular Court" to judge the repression and rights violations in southern Mexico's Oaxaca state over the last year of social conflict. The Popular Court is to collect evidence on "crimes against humanity perpetrated against the people," and submit the findings to national and international legal bodies. APPO Spokesman Florentino Lopez said that over the course of the conflict, police violence has claimed 27 lives, while 43 activists remain in prison—including APPO leader Flavio Sosa, held in isolation at El Altiplano maximum security prison 23 hours a day. (Prensa Latina, April 21)

The Popular Court's opening statement charged that in Oaxaca there is a state of impunity for the "ruling PRI-PAN oligarchy." Federal deputy Antonio Almazán González added that "Oaxaca has been a laboratory for testing a program imported from other countries under forms of tyranny for suffocating the resistance of the people." (Noticias de Oaxaca, April 21)

See our last posts on Mexico and the struggle in Oaxaaca.