In November, traditionalist Catholics abducted, jailed and beat a group of evangelical Christians with rods and stones in Oaxaca on orders from the head of a municipality, according to human rights officials.
A mob sent by San Juan Ozolotepec President Pedro Cruz Gonzalez on November 4 attacked the Christians for declining to participate in and help pay for traditionalist Catholic festivals and for protesting their previous mistreatment. The mob attacked the Christian’s unfinished church structure with sledgehammers and pick-axes, and four of the Christians were jailed from November 5-8, according to the National Commission on Human Rights (NCHR).
‘On November 4, the head of the city ordered the demolishing of their [building], the lynching, incarceration and torture of the followers of the religious congregation’, the NCHR stated in a press release.
News service Agencia JM reported that Alfredo Alonso, along with his brothers Raymundo Alonso and Aquiles Alonso, managed to escape from the mob sent to kill the Christians. Afredo Alonso said Cruz Gonzalez had led townsfolk to hate those who are not traditionalist Catholics, who practise a blend of Catholic and indigenous rites that evangelicals say involves drunkenness, revelry and idol worship. Alonso family members were among those targeted for objecting to the town boss’s April 2011 order to halt construction of the independent Pentecostal church building, which had begun in 2010
