Group remembers Marcelo Perez as outspoken champion of Indigenous, labour rights in Mexican state of Chiapas.
A priest identified for his activism in defence of Indigenous and labour rights in Mexico has been killed after leaving church companies, native authorities mentioned.
Catholic priest Marcelo Perez was returning house from church on Sunday when two males on a motorbike pulled alongside his automobile and shot him, prosecutors within the southern state of Chiapas mentioned.
“Father Marcelo has been an emblem of resistance and has stood alongside the communities of Chiapas for many years, defending the dignity and rights of the folks and dealing towards true peace,” the Jesuits, Perez’s non secular order, mentioned in a press release.
The killing comes amid a interval of heightened violence within the southern state, which recorded about 500 murders between January and August this yr.
Together with the rights of Indigenous folks and farmworkers, the Jesuits mentioned Perez was additionally a vocal critic of organised legal teams.
“This area doesn’t simply undergo from murders, but additionally compelled recruitment (into legal teams), kidnappings, threats and ransacking of its pure sources,” the non secular order mentioned.
Mexican human rights activists and environmental defenders have lengthy condemned violent harassment and intimidation by legal teams and state safety forces.
Perez was himself a member of the Tzotzil Indigenous peoples and had served the neighborhood in Chiapas for twenty years, creating a status as somebody who might assist settle disputes, particularly over land.
“We’ll collaborate with all of the authorities so his loss of life doesn’t go unpunished and people responsible face the courts,” Chipas Governor Rutilio Escandon mentioned in a social media submit, calling the assassination “cowardly”.
However in Mexico, accountability for homicide is the exception somewhat than the rule, with about 95 p.c of all homicides going unsolved.
Rights activists and Indigenous land defenders face excessive ranges of violence and intimidation in Mexico.
A 2023 Amnesty Worldwide report discovered that these teams face excessive ranges of criminalisation and persecution as a part of a “broader technique of disincentivizing and dismantling advocacy for land, territorial and environmental rights”.
The rights group additionally mentioned Mexico “ranks among the many nations with the very best variety of murders of environmental defenders”.
On Sunday, the United Nations human rights workplace in Mexico mentioned “a number of nationwide and worldwide organizations had publicly warned in regards to the rising variety of threats, assaults and acts of criminalization in opposition to” Perez, the priest.
It mentioned these threats “have intensified lately attributable to his tireless work in favor of justice and the rights of Indigenous peoples”.
