Priest shot dead in southern Mexico after leaving Sunday service

Colleagues retrieve Marcelo Perez arsenic outspoken champion of Indigenous, labour rights successful Mexican authorities of Chiapas.

A clergyman known for his activism successful defence of Indigenous and labour rights successful Mexico has been killed aft leaving religion services, section authorities said.

Catholic clergyman Marcelo Perez was returning location from religion connected Sunday erstwhile 2 men connected a motorcycle pulled alongside his conveyance and changeable him, prosecutors successful the confederate authorities of Chiapas said.

“Father Marcelo has been a awesome of absorption and has stood alongside the communities of Chiapas for decades, defending the dignity and rights of the radical and moving toward existent peace,” the Jesuits, Perez’s spiritual order, said successful a statement.

The sidesplitting comes amid a play of heightened violence successful the confederate state, which recorded astir 500 murders betwixt January and August this year.

Along with the rights of Indigenous radical and farmworkers, the Jesuits said Perez was besides a vocal professional of organised transgression groups.

“This portion doesn’t conscionable endure from murders, but besides forced recruitment (into transgression groups), kidnappings, threats and ransacking of its earthy resources,” the spiritual bid said.

Mexican quality rights activists and environmental defenders person agelong condemned convulsive harassment and intimidation by transgression groups and authorities information forces.

Perez was himself a subordinate of the Tzotzil Indigenous peoples and had served the assemblage successful Chiapas for 2 decades, processing a estimation arsenic idiosyncratic who could assistance settee disputes, particularly implicit land.

“We volition collaborate with each the authorities truthful his decease doesn’t spell unpunished and those blameworthy look the courts,” Chipas Governor Rutilio Escandon said successful a societal media post, calling the assassination “cowardly”.

But successful Mexico, accountability for execution is the objection alternatively than the rule, with astir 95 percent of each homicides going unsolved.

Rights activists and Indigenous onshore defenders look high levels of violence and intimidation successful Mexico.

A 2023 Amnesty International study recovered that those groups look precocious levels of criminalisation and persecution arsenic portion of a “broader strategy of disincentivizing and dismantling advocacy for land, territorial and biology rights”.

The rights radical besides said Mexico “ranks among the countries with the highest fig of murders of biology defenders”.

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Al Jazeera and quality agencies