Today, September 4, 2021, while we were in a virtual meeting of the Coordination and Monitoring Commission of the National Indigenous Congress-Indigenous Governing Council, to analyze and make decisions on various issues related to the participation of delegates of the CNI-CIG and the People’s Front in Defense of Land and Water in the Journey for Life, along with the delegation from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, who will soon leave for the European continent, we were the target of blatant infiltration. Intermittent threats and harassment continued throughout the meeting, which, as a consequence, lasted 7 hours, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
As we were dealing with the agenda item on the Campaign for Truth and Justice, and that of the victims of crimes of the bad governments of the past and present, a voice broke into the meeting with a higher volume than that of the other participants and we heard a man, with a seemingly South American accent, launching insults against compañero Carlos González, a member of the CNI-CIG’s Commission of Coordination and Monitoring, like: “shut up, they are going to cancel you”, “shut up Carlos, shut up son of a bitch,” “the problem is Carlos ”and “we are going to find you.” For this reason, several participants proposed to leave the session on the zoom platform. Immediately, the same voice insisted “Yes, let’s go, we must exclude Carlos.”
These messages did not come from any of the participants in the virtual meeting of the CNI-CIG coordination commission, nor anyone with access authorized by the communication commission, so we left the session and looked for safer ways to conclude the meeting.
Upon establishing a new session on the zoom platform, agreed upon only by members of the coordination commission through Signal, we joined with controlled access and verifying identities. However, at a certain point, a user named “Sofia Ramírez” requested access, and not being recognized was denied access, but still managed to hack in by automatically changing their name to that of one of the participants and threaten: “It’s Gaby from Yucatán, she contacted the hacker and they hacked everyone,” in clear reference to one of our compañeras.
At the same time, the WhatsApp group that we as a coordination commission have used to communicate was tapped, and its name was changed to “I’m not leaving,” a change presumably made by a fellow member of the group who denied having done so. Also, a few hours before starting our meeting, compañero Omar Esparza, a member of the coordination commission and of the MAIZ organization, received 6 calls from a person with the same voice who broke into the videoconference.
Hence, we denounce this as a campaign of infiltration and harassment of compañeros y compañeras of the CNI-CIG peoples, who organize to defend their territory and life in the face of the megaprojects of the bad government.
We condemn this infiltration and harassment, for which we hold the bad government and its systems of intelligence and espionage responsible; and we reaffirm that our struggle is for life, and that fear has been replaced with anger and rebellion. We do not surrender; we do not sell out, and we do not give up. We are not afraid of them, and we will not take one step backwards in this movement from below.
Sincerely
September 4, 2021
For the Integral Reconstitution of Our Peoples
Never Again a Mexico Without Us
Coordination and Monitoring Commission of the National Indigenous Congress – Indigenous Governing Council and Delegation of the CNI-CIG and the Peoples’ Front in Defense of Land and Water in the “Journey for Life”