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According to a brand new report by the NGO Comité de Defensa Integral de los Derechos Humanos and three other local human rights organizations in Oaxaca, the number of attacks against activists fighting the wind industry is increasing. In 2016, human rights activists were attacked 124 times, in 2017 113 times. At least seven activists were killed in 2017 and three in 2018, according to the report Under Attack, Human Rights in Oaxaca 2013-2018. Including Rolando Crispín López.
According to a brand new report by the NGO Comité de Defensa Integral de los Derechos Humanos and three other local human rights organizations in Oaxaca, the number of attacks against activists fighting the wind industry is increasing. In 2016, human rights activists were attacked 124 times, in 2017 113 times. At least seven activists were killed in 2017 and three in 2018, according to the report Under Attack, Human Rights in Oaxaca 2013-2018. Including Rolando Crispín López.
Several human rights activists have been killed after targeting the international wind turbine companies in Mexico
Protests against the entry of large wind turbine companies into Oaxaca can be a dangerous matter. Several leading activists have been killed while others live with death threats and police protection
Rolando Crispín López was killed one solar hot July morning on his way home from work. Shot in the back of a perpetrator on a red motorcycle.
López had stopped in Benito Juarez street in Álvaro Obregón, a suburb of the provincial town of Juchitán de Zaragoza in southern Mexico. He would buy in a bit before going home and sleep after a long night watch.
Suddenly, a hooded perpetrator came riding a red motorcycle and shot …
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Several human rights activists have been killed after targeting the international wind turbine companies in Mexico
Protests against the entry of large wind turbine companies into Oaxaca can be a dangerous matter. Several leading activists have been killed while others live with death threats and police protection
Rolando Crispín López was killed one solar hot July morning on his way home from work. Shot in the back of a perpetrator on a red motorcycle.
López had stopped in Benito Juarez street in Álvaro Obregón, a suburb of the provincial town of Juchitán de Zaragoza in southern Mexico. He would buy in a bit before going home and sleep after a long night watch.
Suddenly, a hooded perpetrator came riding a red motorcycle and shot Lopez several times in the back. Lopez had died on the spot and an eight-year-old girl who happened to be on her way down the street was injured.
According to eyewitnesses, the perpetrator disappeared on the red motorcycle, leaving the body of Rolando Crispín López on the roadside.
For more than five years, Lopéz had spent all his waking hours fighting the many major wind turbine projects that have been shot up in recent years throughout the poor, wind-widening state of Oaxaca. In particular, he spent time fighting the mega project Eólica del Sur, in Danish “ Sydvind ”, on which the Danish wind turbine company Vestas is the main contractor.
Lopéz, which belongs to the Zapatecs, one of Mexico's indigenous peoples, was active in the organization Asamblea de los Pueblos Indígenas del Istmo de Tehuantepec and Defensa de la Tierra y el Territorio, APIITDTT.
Among other things, he organized peaceful protests against the wind farm. And he helped pull the wind turbine project in court. He and 1,166 other Zapatecs believed that they had not been adequately heard in connection with the major project.
The total of 132 wind turbines are built on 736 plots of poor farmers around the Juchitan and the neighboring village of El Espinal, inhabited mainly by Zapatecs.
A dangerous business
But it can be dangerous to stand up to big money interests in Mexico.
According to a brand new report by the NGO Comité de Defensa Integral de los Derechos Humanos and three other local human rights organizations in Oaxaca, the number of attacks against activists fighting the wind industry is increasing.
In 2016, human rights activists were attacked 124 times, in 2017 113 times. At least seven activists were killed in 2017 and three in 2018, according to the report Under Attack, Human Rights in Oaxaca 2013-2018. Including Rolando Crispín López.
Imprisonment, threats and raids carried out by local authorities are also part of today's order, it appears.
The picture is confirmed by Amnesty International, among others, at the end of November urged Mexico's new President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to “ recognize the work of human rights activists as legitimate ”, including the activists “ who defend land rights, territorial rights and environmental rights ”.
Amnesty also asks President Obrador to emphasize the importance of protecting “ activists.
And that is needed. According to the London-based Business and Human Rights Resource Center, a public meeting on the Eólica del Sur project in the village of San Dionisio del Mar was shot in March 2018 and five participants seriously injured.
With death in the heels
One of the activists living with the risk of losing their lives is Bettina Cruz Velasquez, whom Danwatch has interviewed in connection with a number of articles on the advancement of the wind industry in Oaxaca.
She is a member of the same organization as Lopez and has also been involved in the fight for indigenous peoples' rights in Oaxaca for a number of years.
She is not surprised that her colleague was shot down on the open street.
“ It is a risk we live with all the time ”, she says, telling how she regularly receives death threats because of her commitment to indigenous peoples' rights.
“ There are many other activists who are also being threatened. Lopez is not the only one killed ”, she says.
In 2013, another prominent defender of indigenous peoples' rights in Oaxaca was killed.
Héctor Regalado Jiménez was a member of their local organization Asamblea Popular del Pueblo Juchiteco, APPJ, and had, among other things, been an active opponent of the Bii Hioxho wind turbine project, which the Spanish company Gas Natural Fenosa was building.
Bettina Cruz Velasquez himself lives under police protection because of the many threats.
This means that she is visited by the police several times a week so that they can make sure that she is still alive.
She also gets a phone grant so she can call the local police station in case of assault and also has various other safeguards in her home.
Unknown perpetrators
Most recently, she was threatened at a press conference in November 2018 when her organization lost a case against Eólica del Sur at the Supreme Court of Mexico.
“ Two men came up to me and handed in a flyer with a big dead head on. The message was not to be misunderstood. They wanted us to give up the case ”, she says.
Whoever exactly threatens and attacks activists from the local community in Oazaca, Bettina Cruz Velasquez does not.
But she points, among other things, to the armed guards that several of the wind turbine companies have set to guard their wind farms. At least it's the ones she's scared of herself.
In connection with the murder of Rolando Crispín López, several eyewitnesses believed to have recognized a local policeman as the perpetrator.
But so far, neither the murder of Rolando Crispín López nor Héctor Regalado Jiménez has been solved.
Lack of investigation
According to Amnesty International, failure to investigate and prosecute politically motivated crimes is a general problem in Mexico. “ Out-of-court executions were not properly investigated, and perpetrators continued to suffer impunity ”, states in Amnesty's latest annual report on Mexico.
As several of the threats and attacks mentioned in the article here have been directed at activists involved in protests against the Eólica del Sur project, Danwatch has asked the Danish supplier for the project, Vestas, to comment on the indirect charges.
In an email response, Vestas strongly distances itself from the attacks and rejects any connection with the Danish company.
“ Vestas works continuously with its customers, suppliers and partners to ensure that large infrastructure projects such as wind farms are integrated as best as possible in the local community ”, writes Kresten Ørnbjerg, international communications manager in Vestas.
“ Any form of violence or intimidation is always unacceptable to Vestas. We therefore strongly distance ourselves from the article's unsubstantiated relationships between the actions described and Vestas. ”