A protester was shot dead when assailants fired on a march of about 8,000 people calling for the governor's resignation in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.
The killing on Thursday came after months of escalating political violence in the historic state capital, Oaxaca city.
The 50-year-old protester, identified as Jose Jimenez, was taken to a hospital with bullet wounds and pronounced dead on arrival, according to his wife Clara Jimenez, who was at the hospital sobbing.
Clara said the bullets appeared to come from a house that the marchers passed. After the shooting protesters set fire to the house, a blaze that firefighters later put out.
Protesters also captured four men who they believe carried out the shooting, said Daniel Rosas, a spokesman for the leftist Oaxaca People's Assembly, which organized the march.
Rosas said the men would be presented to media later. In recent weeks, the protesters have captured several men they accuse of attacks and have later handed them over to federal investigators.
Rosas accused Governor Ulises Ruiz of being behind the shooting. Officials in Ruiz's office denied the charge and condemned the killing.
The assembly is demanding the resignation of Ruiz, whom they accuse of using force to repress dissent and of rigging the 2004 election to win office.
Sustained protests descended on Oaxaca in June after police attacked a demonstration of striking teachers demanding a wage increase.
More than 2,000 protesters have camped out in the city center, building barricades, smashing windows and stealing government vehicles. Armed assailants have shot at a radio station and a newspaper that support the protests, injuring one reporter.
Meanwhile, police are nowhere to be seen in the city center.
On Wednesday, two men and a 12-year-old boy headed to join the protest camps in Oaxaca city were shot dead on a road about 250km from Oaxaca, but it is unclear if that killing was connected to the protests.
The confrontations have driven many tourists out of Oaxaca city, which is popular with international tourists for its cobbled streets, markets and cuisine.
Business groups say the conflict has caused losses of more than US$50 million.
Ruiz is a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years until President Vicente Fox's election in 2000.
Late Thursday, the PRI released a statement in support of Ruiz.
"The situation that is surging in the state is very worrying because it has the risk of spreading," the party said. "It is an explosive cocktail."
On Sunday, Ruiz asked the federal government to send in federal paramilitary police to restore order.
Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal said that federal troops would not be sent in as he believed the problem could be resolved through negotiations.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
RSS