Family of slain reporter seeks justice

Almost four months after US video-journalist Brad Will was killed while filming protests in Oaxaca, members of the Will family have arrived in Mexico City to push federal and state authorities to get serious about bringing their son and brother's murderers to justice. "Our goal is for there to be a legitimate investigation," said Kathy Will, mother of the 36-year-old New York-based journalist who was shot to death on Oct. 27, 2006. "There hasn't been one." Kathy and Howard Will flew into Mexico City from Chicago on Mar. 19, still shaken from the loss of their son but determined to kick-start an inquiry into his death. Older siblings Craig and Christy, 38-year-old twins, arrived the next day. Craig made the trip from Japan, where he lives, via Chicago. "They're not going to let somebody kill their brother and get away with it," Kathy Will said. The family met with federal authorities, US Embassy officials and the National Human Rights Commission on Mar. 20, and then spend the following two days in Oaxaca. "Our major thrust will be to try to secure witnesses and their testimony," said Howard Will, Brad's father, whose friends and family call him Hardy. "An awful lot of people witnessed the event, but they of course have been very reluctant to come forward." In the city of Oaxaca, the family plans to meet with Lizbeth Caña, the controversial state prosecutor who has refused to pursue photographic evidence implicating municipal employees of Santa Lucía del Camino, the neighborhood where Brad Will was shot. Instead, Caña has suggested that members of the Oaxaca People´s Assembly killed Will at close range. The Will family isn't buying that theory. "It's pretty obvious that they [Oaxaca state officials] are covering up for their own paramilitaries, who were instructed by somebody at some level to disrupt the protests," Hardy Will says. "Men were going around without uniforms shooting and killing protesters." Kathy Will said that the family hadn't foreseen the need for a trip to the site of their son's death. "We just assumed there would be a complete investigation," she said. "The evidence that he was shot by paramilitaries while he was filming was so clear-cut that it was a prosecutor's dream." Instead, the investigation stopped dead in its tracks, and the Will family found itself hiring a Mexican lawyer, contacting international human rights groups, and setting up a website (www.bradwill.org). Before they had time to finish grieving, they had become activists. Theirs is a not uncommon story of a family, transformed by tragedy, and later finding strength in action. But Hardy and Kathy are both aware that at least 20 other families are going through the same thing as a result of the Oaxaca unrest of 2006. "Brad was one of three killed that day," Kathy Will said. "And how many were killed before and after that without any investigations? Whatever the number is, it's disgraceful." After the three deaths occurred on Oct. 27, then-President Vicente Fox sent federal police to Oaxaca to suppress the social movement that had formed in June after Governor Ulises Ruiz tried to break a teacher's strike with force. Federal forces spent a violent month trying to pacify Oaxaca, and the Will family is convinced that their methods discouraged the pursuit of justice. "They came in and just started committing atrocities," Kathy Will said. "No wonder people were frightened." Potential witnesses who could have helped build a case against the perpetrators were reluctant to come forward, even well into the new year. "Even if we had names [of potential witnesses] we never would have published them because they were in such danger," Kathy said. "We'd never do anything to jeopardize their well- being. It's bad enough our son was killed; nobody should have to suffer like this." But the Will family thinks the time is right for witnesses to make formal statements with less of a risk. They're hopeful that their presence, along with attorney Miguel Ángel de los Santos, will help get things moving.