Group remembers Marcelo Perez as outspoken champion of Indigenous, labour rights in Mexican state of Chiapas.
A priest recognized for his activism in defence of Indigenous and labour rights in Mexico has been killed after leaving church providers, native authorities stated.
Catholic priest Marcelo Perez was returning house from church on Sunday when two males on a motorbike pulled alongside his car and shot him, prosecutors within the southern state of Chiapas stated.
“Father Marcelo has been a logo of resistance and has stood alongside the communities of Chiapas for many years, defending the dignity and rights of the individuals and dealing towards true peace,” the Jesuits, Perez’s non secular order, stated 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 12 months.
Together with the rights of Indigenous individuals and farmworkers, the Jesuits stated Perez was additionally a vocal critic of organised legal teams.
“This area doesn’t simply endure from murders, but in addition compelled recruitment (into legal teams), kidnappings, threats and ransacking of its pure assets,” the non secular order stated.
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 20 years, creating a repute as somebody who might assist settle disputes, particularly over land.
“We are going to collaborate with all of the authorities so his dying doesn’t go unpunished and people responsible face the courts,” Chipas Governor Rutilio Escandon stated in a social media submit, calling the assassination “cowardly”.
However in Mexico, accountability for homicide is the exception slightly 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 stated Mexico “ranks among the many international locations with the very best variety of murders of environmental defenders”.
On Sunday, the United Nations human rights workplace in Mexico stated “a number of nationwide and worldwide organizations had publicly warned concerning the rising variety of threats, assaults and acts of criminalization in opposition to” Perez, the priest.
It stated these threats “have intensified in recent times on account of his tireless work in favor of justice and the rights of Indigenous peoples”.
