CIVICUS speaks with members of the Collective for the Freedom of Kenia Hernández about the criminalisation of activism in Mexico.
Kenia Hernández is an Amuzga Indigenous woman, defender of Indigenous peoples’ rights to land and territory. She coordinates the Zapata Lives Libertarian Collective, which promotes peaceful resistance to the extractivist development model imposed by the Mexican state. There are currently nine open legal cases against Kenia on fabricated charges linked to her activism, and she has been unjustly imprisoned since October 2020. She is part of the CIVICUS Stand as My Witness campaign seeking her release.
What’s the situation of Kenia Hernandez and the struggle for her release?
Kenia’s work has always focused on denouncing and mobilising against serious human rights violations. Now she is experiencing firsthand the criminalisation of human rights and Indigenous rights activism that so many other activists in Mexico have gone through. The system seeks to keep her behind bars for as long as possible to prevent her continuing to do her work, and to this end prolongs the deprivation of her liberty by repeatedly opening new criminal cases against her.
The campaign for Kenia’s release has two components: a legal struggle, led by a legal team that monitors the proceedings against her, and a political struggle, focused on raising the profile of her case. It is important that the whole country knows what is happening and that people continue to talk about Kenia’s case, and the injustice and impunity she is suffering. We cannot look the other way because her reality is the reality of many other criminalised activists.
How many cases similar to Kenia’s do you estimate there are today?
Kenia’s case is part of a pattern of criminalisation aimed at hindering the work of those defending human rights and the rights of Indigenous peoples in Mexico. The fact that Kenia is an Indigenous woman, a mother, a lawyer and a human rights defender is no coincidence: it is the very reason for her imprisonment.
Other activists have suffered worse fates than prosecution and jail: they have been victims of assassinations, attempts on their lives and enforced disappearances.
It is difficult to estimate how many criminalised activists and political prisoners there are in Mexico because there is no official body tracking them exhaustively. But it is a reality that we corroborate constantly. The main targets of this persecution are racialised activists, usually in a situation of poverty and vulnerability, who fight for a cause the government finds inconvenient. What those causes are depends on the context; each state is different. But they all fall victim to the same criminal system and are equally subjected to the violation of their rights and exposed to injustice and impunity.
To what extent has Kenia’s criminalisation succeeded in silencing demands?
Whenever a situation of criminalisation occurs, the group of activists accompanying or supporting the criminalised defender also fears for their own freedom. After all, what the criminalisation of defenders seeks to do is threaten the whole collective in order to deactivate it.
Perhaps there was a moment when the group supporting Kenia was afraid to raise its voice. The mere fact of working to make Kenia’s situation visible and make demands on her behalf puts us all in a situation of vulnerability. But we have overcome this fear and have continued to put forward our demands and make visible the situation of this particular criminalised defender and the perverse functioning of a criminal justice system that is profoundly racist and classist.
What are your demands to the Mexican state?
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in his ‘Mañanera’ – a daily morning meeting with media – on 30 December 2022, instructed the Secretary for Security and Citizen Protection, Rosa Isela Rodríguez, to follow up on the case of Kenia Hernandez, which was our request. We demand that Ms Rodríguez meet jointly with Kenia’s legal team and with Federal Roads and Bridges (CAPUFE) so that they can have a dialogue and reach an agreement for her prompt release with reparations. CAPUFE is the federal agency that brought charges against Kenia in eight federal criminal cases for the alleged crime of attacks on general communication routes.
In view of the appeal made by United Nations rapporteurs and the fact that Kenia’s case was highlighted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as an example of the criminalisation of protest in Mexico, we hope that all the documentation and support gathered will be taken into account and will result in Kenia’s prompt release, and the recognition that she has been criminalised for her work as a defender of human rights and Indigenous peoples.
Civic space in Mexico is rated ‘repressed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with the Collective for the Freedom of Kenia Hernández through its Facebook page and follow @ParaKenia on Twitter and libertad_para_kenia on Instagram.
