"Is the Commission aware that, according to the Mexican newspaper La Jornada of 3 February 2004, five non-governmental organisations in the south-eastern state of Chiapas consider the European Union to have been involved in an attack on the village of Nuevo San Rafael, controlled by the Zapatista movement and occupied by members of the Chol tribe, in the remote nature reserve of Montes Azules, which consists of primeval forest, on 19 or 22 January, in which attack 23 houses were set on fire, the occupants fled, the village was permanently cut off from the outside world by soldiers and the land is being returned to the former big land-owners to enable them to fell the primeval forest? [...] Was this attack encouraged by the fact that the EU has concluded an agreement concerning a development project worth € 15.000.000 with governor Pablo Salazar, possibly in part in connection with Plan Puebla Panama, which comprises major infrastructure projects in Central America from Panama to nine poor federal states in Mexico, which require the indigenous Indian population to make way for newcomers and to enable the land to be put to new uses or at least compel that population to give up the autonomy which it in practice enjoys?"
