Elio Henríquez
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas. The National Network of Civil Human Rights Organizations, All Rights for All, called on federal and state authorities to “urgently provide humanitarian aid” to hundreds of families displaced on January 16th from communities in Chicomuselo, La Concordia and Socoltenango due to drug violence.
“The federal government has recognized at the international and national level the causes of forced displacement in other areas in Mexico and the characteristics and conditions that now exist in Chiapas perfectly meet this standard of internal forced displacement produced by criminal violence,” it added.
“Our concern is that these populations that are now leaving have left behind assets, resources, lands and that this territory will obviously now be preyed upon and taken by organized crime,” it said.
It called on federal and state authorities “not to minimize the problem and to recognize the seriousness and urgency of this forced internal displacement.”
The organization also demanded “an investigation be carried out, the capture of the people responsible and the prosecution of those who have caused the criminal violence, as well as the generation of conditions for a probable return and measures of non-repetition.”
The Network expressed its “enormous concern because if this event is not attended to, residents of other municipalities and other communities will make the same decision as there are no guarantees for the protection of their life and integrity.”
It recalled that the organization has “widely denounced and echoed the voice of the residents,” so “now it is up to the authorities to respond; It is the State institutions that are responsible for addressing this humanitarian emergency situation.”
It added: “We have also seen that the presence of the National Guard and the Mexican Army has not been positive in the sense that it has arrived, criminalized, singled out and ordered the population, frightening them, far from helping and implementing support such as the DN3 Plan, for example”.
The group reiterated its “concern about the mass exodus of people who are leaving their communities in Chicomuselo, Socoltenango and La Concordia, but also much earlier about the people who have been displaced from Comalapa, Comitán, La Trinitaria, Bella Vista and La Grandeza”.
Hundreds of families from Chicomuselo, La Concordia and Socoltenango left their communities on the 16th of this month, after a confrontation between members of drug trafficking groups and the entry of Mexican Army troops into the town of Nueva América, Chicomuselo, who confronted the residents.
Original article at https://www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2024/01/22/estados/urgen-activistas-a-dar-ayuda-humanitaria-a-desplazados-de-chiapas-5025?
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.