Mexico – a good place for Pagans to take a holiday?
Mexican mob beats 6 people accused of practising witchcraft
May 6, 2005
SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico.
A mob beat six people accused of practising witchcraft in a mountainous area of Mexico's southernmost state but police intervened before anyone was murdered.
In excess of 100 inhabitants of the remote and largely native town Pantlho in Chiapas State gathered at midday Thursday, cornering six locals who were accused of meeting in a home to practise witchcraft, according to Armando Juarez, the community's mayor.
Responding to emergency calls, soldiers and police attempted to negotiate their way into the town as the mob beat its victims and made plans to hang them at a soccer stadium, Juarez said.
Authorities were able to scatter much of the throng around 11 p.m. local time and had rescued the victims by the early hours of Friday morning. They were taken to medical centres in adjacent towns.
Residents demanded the victims be ordered to pay a fine because of local ordinances forbidding witchcraft.
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A number of other accused witches have been murdered in Chiapas over the last decade.
In 1996, a gang hanged a man they accused of being a witch. As many as 12 other men were hacked to death with machetes in Chiapas in the 1990s, allegedly as punishment for practicing witchcraft.
The anti-occultist, theocratical ideal of the Church, in all its bigoted forms, imposed on unsuspecting communities like this has a lot to answer for. Whilst the battle for Xtian souls goes on people will die due to such religious bigotry gleaned from fundamentalist-inspired, dogmatic ignorance.
Fundamentalism kills!
Disclaimer:
PAN realises that the vast majority of Christians are not fundamentalist or evangelical in make up and we only criticise religious extremists who seek to disenfranchise other faiths whilst bolstering their own. PAN does not in any way condone violence against any persons or property and we must state that we have always worked towards a more tolerant and equal society.