Nestora Salgado García, gaze steady and voice passionate, calls out for her release. Her immediate departure with justice from Tepepan Prison. A liberty that might come as a call to her people and might—almost magically—become the direction of a repressive State.
Despite thirty months of confinement, complete, solid, rebellious thoughts continue to rise up from inside her. The State, with all its brutality, has not been able to extinguish the fundamental demand of her cause. And with the strength of the love of her daughters, who sporadically cut through the pain of her hands with warm massages that they want to go on forever, Nestora hopes that it might be the tormentor himself who might give back to her her life. The physical calamity is obvious. Her convictions, however, lie dormant.
In an almost inexplicable manner, she finds hope. I bring her an international petition for release and reparation, achieved by force with the struggle of her family. A decision that for the first time in these more than two years that we have been witnessing daily the absurdity that prolongs her imprisonment, she evaluates independently. National justice has been evasive, negligent, complicit, rather, architect of the abusive use of punitive power to silence her, break her. Now it's time to release her.
The strong statements of the United Nations High Commissioner in the case of Julian Assange give me the words I need to explain in a simple, human way, what it means that the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions would declare her detention illegal and arbitrary from its start until today. I try to convey to her how international law against impunity eliminates it [her detention], and how the obligatory nature of its rules works. She takes notice, surprised.
Finally, someone has realized that she is being tried twice and that nothing about her case resembles a fair legal proceeding. We reread their [UN Working Group's] order of release and with it international recognition of her as an indigenous leader criminalized for her community police work. Thus Nestora joins the worldwide cluster of political prisoners who can find no other arena than the international in order to unmask the State. In that global fight, the law was on their side.
The visit is over, it's cold and I must go. I don't want to. The request for release does not hold the key. The State does.
The visit is over, it's cold and I must go. I don't want to. The request for release does not hold the key. The State does.
Nestora takes refuge in so many people who support her and in the immeasurable work done by all those who from various areas fight tirelessly for her release. Journalists rescue her voice from the imposed silence, and international organizations try to counteract the State assault on her rights.
These are crucial weeks in that domestic authorities might take the necessary measures to reverse this injustice, and we might have Nestora released.
And Nestora waits ...
Spanish original
*Alejandra Gonza, International Human Rights Clinic, Seattle University, a Jesuit institution in Seattle, Washington.
Related MV Translations:
- Mexico Drug War-Guerrero: Government Deliberately Manipulating Judicial Proceeding Against Nestora Salgado - Lawyer (2/16/2016);
- Mexico Drug War-Guerrero: UN Group's Resolution to Release Nestora Binding on Government (2/4/2016);
- Mexico Drug War-Guerrero: Nestora Salgado's Arrest "Illegal and Arbitrary" - UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (2/3/2016);
- Mexico Drug War-Guerrero: Nestora Salgado's Letter from Tepepan Women's Prison (8/28/2015);
- Mexico: Guerrero State Superior Court to Streamline Nestora Salgado's Judicial Process (8/26/2015);
- Nestora Salgado, the Narco-State and Patriarchal Violence (8/24/2015);
- Nestora Salgado Should be Released Immediately" - Human Rights Groups (8/12/2015);
- Witnesses Against Nestora Salgado Fail to Appear to Testify; Process Delayed (8/11/2015);
- Nestora Salgado Presents Her Case (8/10/2015);
- Nestora Salgado Charges: "The Criminals Respected Community Police; The Government Wanted to Destroy Us" (6/23/2015);
- Nestora Salgado Is Illegally Imprisoned; Victim of Irregular Court Proceedings (5/11/2015);
- Mexico-Guerrero: Defending CRAC-PC In Its Time of Crisis (7/19/2014);
- Community Police and Self-Defense Groups: A Necessary Distinction (1/23/2014);
- Self-Defense Groups and Community Police Are Not the Same (1/20/2014);
- "Being a Community Police Officer Is Not a Choice, But An Assembly Decision" (9/27/2013);
- Community Police Justice Focuses On Re-Education, Study and Work for 'Criminals' in Guerrero, Mexico (6/9/2013);
- Leaders of CRAC Community Police Defend Their 17-Year Record of "Good Work" (3/22/2013).