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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | December 2006 
Chiapas Creates Prosecutor's Office to Investigate 1997 Massacre
 Associated Press
| | "Punish the paramilitaries." Cross and caskets memorialize the 45 victims of the Acteal Massacre of December 22, 1997 during the International Day of Indigenous Peoples march in August 2000. |
TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico - Mexico's southern state of Chiapas said Wednesday it has created a special prosecutor's office to investigate a 1997 massacre of 45 Indian villagers.
It also announced an office to look into the killings of three journalists in the 1990s, which will call former Gov. Patrocinio Gonzales Blanco to testify based on claims by some of the victims' relatives that he was involved in the killings, Attorney General Mariano Herran said.
On Dec. 22, 1997, paramilitaries with alleged ties to the government attacked a prayer meeting of Roman Catholic activists who sympathized with the Zapatista rebels in the hamlet of Acteal. The assailants killed 45 people, including children as young as 2 months old.
Twenty-four of the attackers were each sentenced to a little more than 36 years in prison, and 51 others still face trial. But activists say most of those arrested and tried are Indian farmers, and that former state officials allegedly responsible for the killings have gone largely unpunished.
The killings may have been sparked by a dispute between two Indian villages over land use, although activists say the massacre was part of a government campaign against the rebels who staged a brief armed uprising in Chiapas in 1994 to demand greater Indian rights.
The case is being handled by federal prosecutors, who will be aided by the new state prosecutor's office.
The federal government also has a special prosecutor's office to investigate crimes against journalists, which have risen significantly in the last two years.
Since 2004, at least 13 journalists have been killed in Mexico, presumably as revenge for unfavorable reports on criminals, drug traffickers and corrupt government officials. |
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