FILMING HIS OWN DEATH, BRAD WILL IN OAXACO, MEXICO

- IN MEMORIAM -

BRAD WILL
"WE ARE EVERYWHERE ON EARTH"

FILMING HIS OWN DEATH IN OAXACA - MEXICO.

by

Henk Ruyssenaars, Senior Correspondent,

Foreign Press Foundation,The Netherlands

FPF - October 30th 2006 - When working as an independent correspondent in Chile, I saw the zooming in on a killer for the first time when cameraman Leonardo Henrichsen was filming his own death. He was shot during the failed military coup on June 29, 1973, shortly before Washington's war machine and CIA/Kissinger's coup on the 11th of September 'suicided' democratically elected President Salvador Allende. And the US war machine and it's mercenaries - apart from at least 30.000 other victims - at the same time killed the hopes for a more humane future for the Chilean people until now.

The US as usual started the dictatorship and ensuing massacres by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and his killers, and kept profiting. But I've seen the corpses. In the streets and on the slabs in the morgue, in the Mapoche river too, with their hands tied behind their backs with barbed wire.

That is the system which kills for profit, and kills journalists and cameramen to cover their criminality. Everywhere on earth.


AND TODAY I SAW IT AGAIN: US FILMMAKER BRAD WILL FILMING HIS OWN DEATH.

On June 29th in 1973, Leonardo Henrichsen, a TV cameraman from Argentina, like many journalists/correspondents was outside La Moneda, the presidential palace in Santiago, Chile, trying to film an attempted military coup against President Salvador Allende. His lens zoomed in on one soldier, who was aiming a pistol directly at him.

"Don't shoot," Henrichsen cried out, as his sound technician's audio recorder captured the words. "Don't you see that we're journalists?" Moments later, Henrichsen lay sprawled on the pavement with a fatal bullet lodged in his chest, while his camera pointed up at a blank sky.

FILMING HIS OWN DEATH

In this case the local 'police' in Oaxaca - which everywhere on earth, like all armed forces in state service, is armed and dangerous - last Friday shot and killed Indymedia film reporter Brad Will, and the names and pictures of the state killers are public.*


One thing however, for those optimists and/or ignorant which still think it's different in Melbourne or Montreal, in New York or Nagasaki: from Kiruna to Cape Town this dangerous and repressive system is everywhere the same, and the bullets that hit Brad Will and many others have our name on them too. That goes for the bombs as well. The 655.000 dead in Iraq should be enough evidence for everybody to confirm this. As well as the millions of others which ended their days enduring the US made deadly freedom they never asked for. But which is supported by collaborators of many nationalities in many countries. The fact that they all are guilty of crimes against humanity - according to international law and conventions - doesn't matter to the state's mercenaries.

WHEREVER YOU LIVE: IF YOU AND THE PEOPLE IN A COUNTRY REJECT THIS SYSTEM, THE KILLING SOON WILL BE IN A WAR THEATER NEAR YOU. A COLLEAGUE WHO ALSO INVESTIGATED THIS REPRESSIVE SYSTEM IN THE US/ISRAELI COLONY THE NETHERLANDS WAS KILLED A YEAR AGO, 300 METERS FROM WHERE THIS IS WRITTEN.

Merciless the US war machine killers all claim the right and 'license to kill' and the only choice - apart from joining the growing resistance everywhere - is to shut up and pay up. To go on being forced to finance their war crimes for profit. Human beings - even by the millions - do never count, only profit and power does.

It would be a very good thing if people the world over better remember that resistance against invaders is not only a legal universal right, but also a plight: you've got to fight to defend your family, yourself and your country when the US or any other war machine as usual wants to wreck and kill everything.

The chance that the same human disaster is possible in your country and corner of our world may look far away to many, but this is our life nowadays to which we must react. And why should we use words when they use guns?

When law is valid again they will be punished in every country where this is possible, and certainly those murderers in Mexico too, but most important is the group managing the US war machine: they are the origin of all global misery and massacres. They are the bad geniuses behind the killings of millions. And they'll gladly kill you and yours if it's profitable.

Time indeed has come for all brave people to join the resistance and fight.

And not only on the Internet or with a camera in hand.

*******************************

DEATH IN OAXACO

“and now alejandro waits in the zocalo -- like the others at their plantones -- hes waiting for an impasse, a change, an exit, a way forward, a way out, a solution -- waiting for the earth to shift and open -- waiting for november when he can sit with his loved ones on the day of the dead and share food and drink and a song -- waiting for the plaza to turn itself over to him and burst -- he will only wait until morning but tonight he is waiting for the governor and his lot to never come back -- one more death -- one more martyr in a dirty war -- one more time to cry and hurt -- one more time to know power and its ugly head -- one more bullet cracks the night -- one more night at the barricades -- some keep the fires -- others curl up and sleep -- but all of them are with him as he rests one last night at his watch”

11/Oct/06 “Death in Oaxaco” by Brad Will

http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/10/77343.shtml