(11 Jun 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Yajalón, Mexico - 11 June 2024
1. Aerial of makeshift shelter for internally displaced people fleeing violence ++MUTE++
2. Wide of makeshift shelter for internally displaced people fleeing violence
3. People outside shelter
4. Various of food distribution outside makeshift shelter
5. Mexican army truck
5. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) (No name given), internally displaced person:
"Terrifying. There are no words to describe it. Feeling that your life is hanging by a thread, praying to God that they don't find you, you ask everyone for help and no one can do anything for you. Worrying all night and feeling that your daughter is by your side and is in constant danger, not knowing what they can dare to do to an 11-year-old girl and that she tells you she doesn't want to die."
6. Various of internally displaced person speaking to crowd
7. Various of internally displaced people at makeshift shelter
8. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Arturo Sánchez, internally displaced person:
"They didn't pay the criminal demands for extortion and some of them who had paid also had their houses burned down. In my case, they have tried to extort me by phone but when I see the numbers and I don't know them, I don't answer. They have already tried to extort me, (and have asked for) 35,000 pesos, 100,000 pesos."
9. Various of internally displaced people at makeshift shelter
STORYLINE:
More than 4,000 residents of the town of Tila in southern Mexico fled over the weekend after armed gangs shot up the town and burned many homes last week, state prosecutors said.
It was probably the biggest mass displacement in Chiapas since 1997.
Hundreds of them were staying at a makeshift shelter in a football court in the neighbouring town of Yajalón, where some residents recounted spending days trapped in their homes before army troops and state police showed up to allow them to leave.
Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador depicted the assault as "a conflict between the very same people" of the town of Tila, an apparent reference to a longstanding land dispute between farmers.
Observers said criminal gangs and political interests were behind the clash.
The Digna Ochoa Human Rights Center said a group calling itself the "Autonomos," or Autonomous Ones, was behind the violence, and said it was linked to drug trafficking.
At least two people were confirmed dead and at least 17 buildings were burned last week, according to state prosecutors.
The gangs had also been blamed for extorting protection payments from residents and setting up roadblocks.
López Obrador said food was being supplied to the camps.
He claimed "things have calmed down," and said the government now wanted to start negotiations with the groups "to reach an agreement so that people can return to their communities."
But some of the residents from Tila have told The Associated Press they do not feel safe to return.
Battles between rival drug cartels have hit several townships in Chiapas near the Guatemala border, because the area is a main route for smuggling drugs and migrants.
López Obrador has long sought to downplay the violence in Chiapas, accusing those who write about it of "sensationalism."
In 1994, rebels of the Zapatista indigenous rights movement staged a brief armed uprising in Chiapas, and thousands of people were displaced as a result of the fighting between the rebels and the army.
In 1997, the massacre of 45 Indigenous villagers in Acteal, sparked by land and political conflicts, also sent thousands of people fleeing.
AP video shot by: Raúl Mendoza
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