Over 4,000 residents flee a town in southern Mexico after armed gangs start shooting, burn homes
Updated 12:29 PM CDT, June 10, 2024
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador acknowledged Monday that authorities have had to set up camps for displaced people after some 4,200 residents fled a town in the southern state of Chiapas.
Residents of the town of Tila fled over the weekend after armed gangs shot up the town and burned many homes last week, state prosecutors said. It was probably the biggest mass displacement in Chiapas since 1997.
Some residents recounted spending days trapped in their homes before army troops and state police showed up over the weekend to allow them to leave.
Photos distributed by state authorities showed people fleeing with just purses on their shoulders, or sometimes small backpacks or shoulder bags.
. . .
The Digna Ochoa Human Rights Center said a group calling itself the “Autonomos,” or Autonomous Ones, was behind the violence, and said it was linked to drug trafficking. At least two people were confirmed dead and at least 17 buildings were burned last week, according to state prosecutors.
More:
https://apnews.com/article/mexico-fleeing-violence-chiapas-f1e9707b5f2ad01f436a412357b05c45
~ ~ ~
Reminder of who Digna Ochoa was, until her assassination in 2001.
From Wikipedia:
Digna Ochoa (born Digna Ochoa y Plácido; May 15, 1964 – October 19, 2001)[2] was a human rights lawyer in Mexico.[3] During her career, Ochoa had represented some of Mexico's poorest constituents against government interests.[4] On October 19, 2001, Ochoa was shot dead by unknown assailants at her office in Mexico City. Mexican state authorities initially declared her death a suicide, however amongst objections from human rights activists the investigation into her death was reopened in 2005.[4] In 2021, Mexico admitted wrongdoing in the investigation of Ochoa's death.[5]
Digna Ochoa was born in Misantla, in the state of Veracruz. Ochoa was a nun before she became a human rights lawyer.[4]
Ochoa went to law school in the state capital, Xalapa, Veracruz, in 1984 and began working part-time for the Veracruz Attorney General's Offices in 1986. On August 16, 1988, while politically active with opposition groups, and after advising her family that she had found a "black list" of union and political activists at the office of her employer, she was abducted in Jalapa, Veracruz. Ochoa claimed that her abductors were state police officers and that she was raped. There was no investigation of her allegations. In 1991 she entered the Dominican convent of the Incarnate Word where she studied until 1999. She left without taking her vows.
In August 1999, Digna Ochoa was kidnapped and held in a car in Mexico City before being freed. In October 1999, Ochoa was kidnapped again in Mexico City and interrogated overnight. She was left next to an open cylinder of gas. Mexico City police investigated and the Inter-American Human Rights Court recommended protection for her.
. . .
Ochoa was killed on October 19, 2001, at her office in the Roma district of Mexico City.[6][7] At the time of her death, she was involved in the defence of peasant ecologists in Guerrero. Her body was found in the law office where she worked. A note was found by her body, warning the members of the human rights law centre where she had recently worked that the same thing could happen to them.
More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digna_Ochoa
