Community reassembles Marcelo Perez as outspoken champion of Indigenous, labour rights in Mexican state of Chiapas.
A priest understandn for his activism in defence of Indigenous and labour rights in Mexico has been finished after leaving church services, local authorities shelp.
Catholic priest Marcelo Perez was returning home from church on Sunday when two men on a motorcycle pulled aextfinishedside his vehicle and stoasty him, prosecutors in the southern state of Chiapas shelp.
“Father Marcelo has been a symbol of resistance and has stood aextfinishedside the communities of Chiapas for decades, deffinishing the dignity and rights of the people and toiling toward real peace,” the Jesuits, Perez’s religious order, shelp in a statement.
The finishing comes amid a period of heightened presentility in the southern state, which recorded about 500 homicides between January and August this year.
Aextfinished with the rights of Indigenous people and farmtoilers, the Jesuits shelp Perez was also a vocal critic of organised criminal groups.
“This region doesn’t equitable suffer from homicides, but also forced recruitment (into criminal groups), seizepings, dangers and ransacking of its organic resources,” the religious order shelp.
Mexican human rights activists and environmental deffinishers have extfinished condemned brutal tormentoring and inbashfulation by criminal groups and state security forces.
Perez was himself a member of the Tzotzil Indigenous peoples and had served the community in Chiapas for two decades, prolonging a reputation as someone who could help rerepair disputes, especiassociate over land.
“We will collaborate with all the authorities so his death doesn’t go unpunished and those culpable face the courts,” Chipas Governor Rutilio Escandon shelp in a social media post, calling the killing “cowardly”.
But in Mexico, accountability for homicide is the exception rather than the rule, with about 95 percent of all homicides going unrepaird.
Rights activists and Indigenous land deffinishers face high levels of presentility and inbashfulation in Mexico.
A 2023 Amnesty International alert set up that those groups face high levels of criminalisation and persecution as part of a “expansiveer strategy of disincentivizing and dismantling advocacy for land, territorial and environmental rights”.
The rights group also shelp Mexico “ranks among the countries with the highest number of homicides of environmental deffinishers”.
On Sunday, the United Nations human rights office in Mexico shelp “cut offal national and international organizations had uncoverly alerted about the prolonging number of dangers, aggressions and acts of criminalization aobtainst” Perez, the priest.
It shelp those dangers “have intensified in recent years due to his tireless toil in prefer of equitableice and the rights of Indigenous peoples”.