Mexico Investigates Killing of Migrants by Soldiers in Chiapas
A military checkpoint in Mexico, Oct. 2024. X/ @OSVNews
October 4, 2024 Hour: 11:58 am
This type of situation must not happen again, President Sheinbaum said.
On Friday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that the National Defense Ministry (SEDENA) has denounced two soldiers who shot migrants in the state of Chiapas, where six people from Egypt, El Salvador, and Peru died.
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“Currently, most of the victims are in contact with their embassies. SEDENA itself filed complaints against the soldiers who fired… This type of situation must not happen again,” she said at her morning press conference.
On Tuesday night, a few hours after Sheinbaum’s inauguration ceremony, two soldiers shot 33 migrants who were traveling in two vans on the highway that connects the municipalities of Villa Comaltitlán and Huixtla in the south of the country. Their action left six migrants dead and 12 people injured.
Initially, SEDENA issued a statement according to which the two Mexican agents had mistaken the 33 migrants for alleged criminals. “When carrying out ground reconnaissance, they detected a pick-up vehicle that was going at high speed and that evaded the military personnel upon seeing it,” it said.
In that statement, the military authorities maintained that the migrants were traveling in vehicles with “railings like those used by criminal groups in that region.”
“The military personnel heard explosions, so two elements activated their weapons, stopping one of the vehicles,” SEDENA said, adding that the Military Justice Attorney General’s Office will also conduct its own investigations.
The 17 migrants who were neither killed nor injured were placed at the disposal of the National Institute of Migration, which handled the incident according to protocol. “The Attorney General’s Office is conducting its own investigations,” said President Sheinbaum in response to a question about why the military shot the migrants.
On Wednesday, the Peruvian Foreign Ministry confirmed that one of the deceased in the incident was from that South American country and therefore “strongly” condemned the events.
teleSUR/ JF Source: EFE – La Jornada