DEMONSTRATORS BLOCKADE MEXICAN EMBASSY IN LONDON

Today Monday 10th December demonstrators blockaded both the Mexican Embassy and Mexican Consulate in London, in solidarity with the Zapatistas and in opposition to the attacks on their communities by the state and paramilitaries.

The waiting police were caught by surprise at the Embassy in St Georges Street. Wearing the symbolic Zapatista red bandanas, demonstrators took over the doorway and draped a huge banner STOP THE REPRESSION right across the front entrance, maintaining this position for several minutes. Then police moved in and manhandled the protestors over to the other side of the road, where the noisy protest continued. Deafening whistle blasts were interspersed with chants of "Zapata vive, la lucha sigue" (Zapata lives, the struggle continues).

"Mexican Government forces evicted two indigenous villages in the Lacandona jungle on 18th August. What's more the state is aiding paramilitary groups who are launching violent attacks on Zapatista villages," said Esther McDonald of the UK Zapatista Solidarity Network. "Today's demonstrations show that people all round the world are prepared to act in solidarity with the Zapatistas' struggle for autonomy. The one thousand "communities in resistance" in Chiapas, with their autonomous health clinics and schools, are an inspiring example of people taking control over their own lives - but they are now under threat."

"We must act now to stop any possibility of another horrific massacre like Acteal when, on 22 December 1997, 45 people were massacred by paramilitaries with the connivance of Mexican state forces in the Chiapan Highlands," she emphasised.

The protestors delivered a letter for the Ambassador, detailing the human rights abuses carried out in recent weeks against at least 21 Zapatista communities. On 24th November 80 members of the paramilitary-type group OPDDICC invaded the village of Bolon Ajaw menacing the residents with guns and machetes and brutally beating a health worker unconscious.

After demonstrating at the Embassy for one and a half hours the protestors moved to the Mexican Consulate in nearby Halkin Street. The demonstrators were able to totally take over the entrance porch, once more completely closing off the entrance by draping banners right across it. The protestors controlled the entrance for around 15 minutes before the arrival of armed diplomatic police, who forced people to the other side of the road.

Among the 20-25 demonstrators were those who had travelled from York, Manchester, Dorset, Reading, Birmingham, Nottingham, Edinburgh and elsewhere to participate. The demonstration was organised by the UK Zapatista Solidarity Network and the new edition of the network's newsletter was distributed, detailing not only the repression in Chiapas but the positive work of the Zapatistas and solidarity groups in building drinking water systems, health clinics and schools.

The Zapatista movement made world headlines when it staged an armed uprising in the southern state of Chiapas on New Years Day 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect. Following the rebellion many of the big local landowners fled. The Zapatistas took the land into communal control and have built their own autonomous communities, with their own health clinics, schools, justice system and grass-roots decision-making structures.