Mexico: New murder of person linked to the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity

Mexico: New murder of person linked to the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity
Trinidad de la Cruz (@MPJD) – SIPAZ

On 7 December 2011 was found the body of Trinidad de la Cuz, leader of the community of Xayakalan, Michoacán, following his kidnapping the previous day by a group of armed men who took him while he was being accompanied by members of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD). Since 6 December, a commission of 12 persons from the MPJD had found themselves in the zone to participate in a community assembly in Santa María Ostula.

It should be remembered that Santa María Ostula has been besieged by paramilitary groups since 2009, when the communards retook close to 1300 hectares that had been seized from them by “small property-owners” in La Placita, Michoacán. The community has organized its own “communal police,” asserting its right to exercise its own forms of justice and self-defense. This situation has resulted in the death of 27 persons and the disappearance of five others. On 7 October, Pedro Leyva was also murdered, just before participating in the second dialogue between the MPJD and President Felipe Calderón.

The MPJD has announced that it will suspend a series of actions it had planned during these days to call attention to the high level of vulnerability experienced by human-rights defenders. …source