This is a story that sounds like it's coming from the 1600s and not 2024.
A group of 150 from the Great Commission Baptist Church in Mexico's Hidalgo State was displaced on April 26 from their homes in the villages of Coamila and Rancho Nuevo after refusing to participate in Catholic festivals in the cities. The villages are predominantly indigenous Nahuati-speaking communities.
After a month like this, the Baptists have been told they can be welcomed back. If they sacrifice their religious freedom, that is.
A group of over 150 Protestant Christians have been forcibly displaced from their communities in Mexico's Hidalgo state and government officials are pressuring them to sign an agreement that violates human rights protections under Mexican law, according to a U.K.-based persecution watchdog.
The pastors and elders, represented by "Pastor Rogelio Hernández Baltazar and church leader Nicolás Hernández Solórzano," held a press conference explaining their refusal to sign the document which would require them to sacrifice their religious liberty.
The agreement would allow local leaders responsible for the mass forced displacement to impose fines of 150,000 Mexican Pesos (roughly $9,000) on the victims, ban three families from returning, and permit other families to return under severe restrictions on their freedom of religion or belief, which have been in place since 2015, CSW said.
Initially, the displaced Christians were forced to seek government assistance for housing and shelter, but the local government has now refused to continue sheltering them. Other nearby churches have been supporting the displaced congregation, half of whom are children.
Incidents of violence and persecution against the Protestant minority in these villages have been ongoing.
In December 2022, a church member was hospitalized in critical condition after being tied to a tree and beaten by village leaders, according to a previous report by CSW. Other community members have faced arbitrary detention, beatings, denial of medical care, job dismissals, blocked access to burial sites, and land confiscation. Since 2018, religious minority children have been barred from attending the local school.
Recently, in March, Pastor Rogelio Hernández Baltazar and other church leaders were arbitrarily detained for 48 hours. In early April, village leaders sanctioned the takeover of five plots of land belonging to church members, destroying crops and removing stones.
With the local government is running cover for the persecutors, the national government will need to intervene. However, given the state of Mexican politics and the influence of the Catholic faith in Mexico, that doesn't seem too likely.
Mexico has done little to curb violence from clans and cartels throughout the country.
Traditionalist Catholics often persecute Mexican Christians, Open Doors USA President and CEO David Curry told The Christian Post in an earlier interview. In this way, they resemble many small, rural groups of people practicing ancient folk religions around the world. Open Doors calls this kind of persecution 'clan violence.'
You know what, I think I may have found 150 legit refugees who have a case to come to the United States!
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