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Thursday October 25, 2007

manos ALC
manos ALC

The detention, torture and murder of an Evangelical because of religious motives, denounced

ALC/CLAI, MEXICO CITY, México, June 20, 2007

The Bar of Christian Lawyers has made known the death of a citizen, member of Taxi Heathrow Airport an Evangelical church, murdered presumably because of religious motives in the state of Chiapas. The lawyers assure that this murder has taken place because “the authorities have let the majority of the offenses having to do with religious intolerance go by unpunished.”

Last May 28, Lorenzo López López visited the community of Jomalhó, in the Municipality of San Juan Chamela, in the company of two family members. They were taken captives by a group of traditionalist Catholics, who accused them of, in their own words, “preaching the Gospel."

According to his family members, López, who was from the region of Betania, in the Municipality of Teopisca, had gone to Jomalhó to settle a debt he had with another family member just gotten married two weeks before. Because López was unable to find this family member, he decided, along with the two other family members present, to wait for him.

The attackers began to surround them and accuse them of introducing a religion different from that of the majority. Only the two family members accompanying López were able to escape, while he was captured by at least 30 persons who brought him before the local authorities in the region’s assembly hall, “to be tried,” where he was hand tied, tortured, stoned, sacrificed and finally buried in a place nearby.

When found by the police two days after the murder, López’s body showed signs of having been tortured and his hands and neck were tied.

Lorenzo López was a member of the “Nueva Esperanza” (“New Hope”) Fraternity of Evangelical Churches, and even though the official report – Preliminary Findings 151/1A01/2007 – does mention that one of the persons detained says that he mistakenly thought López to be a “robber,” the Bar of Christian Lawyers states that it has the personal declarations of López’s mother, Verónica López Días, and his brother, Juan López López, who describe the verbal aggressions of the attackers that same day.

According to a press report publisher last Saturday, the lawyers state that: "We ask President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa to not allow himself to be misinformed by his government officials responsible for the Religious Affairs of the country, and that he visit those states where there have been violations, deprivations, threats, robberies and other offenses having to do with religious intolerance that go unpunished, and where the state of Chiapas is the world leader.”

The Bar of Christian Lawyers ends by saying: “We understand the indifference of the Governor of that public entity, Jaime Sabines, given that those who were attacked are not family members of his, but as brothers in the faith of those who suffer, we will continue with the demand for the instituting of a Special Attorney office, to be responsible for punishing and preventing offences having to do with religion, as well as having ourselves represented in the Office for the General Direction of Religious Matters that is under the Ministry of the Interior.”