Spanish police have arrested three people who tried to scale the walls of the Mexican embassy in Madrid during a demonstration against the slaughter of 45 indigenous Mexican Indians.

The unarmed villagers - 10 men, 21 women and 14 children - were killed on December 23 by paramilitary forces who attacked a refugee camp in Acteal in the heart of the strife-torn state.

Representatives of non-governmental organisations in Spain delivered a written protest to the ambassador, holding the Mexican government "directly or indirectly" responsible for the massacre in the predominantly Maya state of Chiapas, southern Mexico.

The protest note said that the government had helped "prepare, finance and recruit the paramilitary groups" which carried out the killings on Monday.

The Mexican interior ministry said that the government "categorically rejects" charges that it played any part in the massacre, and the governor of Chiapas state has no plans resign despite reports that warnings about the bloodbath went unheeded.

In Paris on Friday, Danielle Mitterrand, widow of president François Mitterrand, led a group of French celebrities demanding that the Mexican authorities disband the paramilitaries.

Representatives of the group asked to be admitted to the Mexican embassy later in the day to deliver a note stating: "Mexico cannot maintain talk in Paris about democracy, human rights and peace while it allows death squads to sow terror with impunity in Chiapas."

Pope John Paul II offered prayers for the Mexican villagers and referred to them in his traditional St Stephen's Day speech from the balcony of his holiday residence outside Rome.

"The joy of this year's Christmas festivities has been disturbed by a cruel event in a church of the diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico," the Pope said.

"I hope solutions to the social problems afflicting Chiapas can be found through dialogue and brotherly solidarity."
 

Back to top | BBC News Home | BBC Homepage	©