wdoherty@bbncca.ARPA (Will Doherty) (07/22/84)
From The Body politic of July/Aug 1984, p.19: FIVE GROUPS CONDEMN HUGE POLICE SWEEPS Mexico City-- Five Mexican lesvian and gay groups issued a press bulletin late in March denouncing massive police sweeps that have resulted in the arrests of hundreds of gay men in mexico City this spring. The largest sweep took place late in the evening of March 10. More than 50 patrol cars and 10 busloads of police officers swooped down on the Zona Rosa and the Colonia Roma districts, arresting more than one thousand people, most of them youths, prostitutes and gay people. Press reports referred to those arrested as "sluts, lowlife, drug addicts, muggers, homosexuals, and drunks." Police justified their raid as protecting the public from delinquency and as part of the presidential campaign for moral reform. Street crime has increased as more and more Mexicans are driven into abject poverty by the country's serious economic crisis. The gay groups charged that "the roundups have created in many localities a virtual state of seige or curfew because the police... detain without any legal justification any individual they find in the street." The groups will try to collect 41,000 signatures on a petition to be presented to President Miguel de la Madrid on International Human Rights Day, denouncing anti-gay police repression. The country's sixth annual Lesbian and Gay Pride Day march will take place in Mexico City on June 30 and an act of pilgrimage to the Basilica of Guadalupe is being planned by gay Christian groups to protest the negative attitude of the Catholic Church hierarchy. Brought to you by: Will Doherty decvax!bbncca!wdoherty wdoherty@mit-athena