Ten Christian families have been evicted from their community in Mexico and left in the mountains after they refused to renounce their faith, according to the International Christian Concern (ICC).
The Baptist families, consisting of 18 adults and 10 children, were reportedly expelled from the community of Tuxpan de Bolanos in the state of Jalisco, Mexico last Jan. 26 following a consensus made by its residents, who are followers of syncretistic Catholicism, a religion formed of components of Catholicism and indigenous beliefs and rituals.
"At 3 p.m, a town assembly agreement to evict these families from the community was executed by local citizens who gathered the Baptist believers into a pickup truck and abandoned them in the nearby mountains,'' Charisma News reported, citing ICC as source.
The Christian organisation condemned the decades-long system of persecution of evangelical Christians in rural Mexico.
"ICC is disturbed to learn of another instance of religious minorities being expelled by local governments on the basis of their faith,'' said Nate Lance, ICC's advocacy manager.
Lance said the organisation also laments that the state and federal government continue to refuse to protect their religious minorities or prosecute perpetrators, resulting on these families to now become ''religious refugees in their own country.''
"In the strongest terms, we demand that the government of Mexico intervene and reinstate the freedom of worship that their Constitution is meant to guarantee,'' he said.
The regional president of the Baptist community, Omar Rodriguez, has reportedly made arrangements with the city government of Guadalajara to house the expelled families. The city has also been asked to dispatch police patrols to transport them to safety, reports said.
Some U.S government officials are also trying to help end the persecution of Christian minorities in that country by allowing an open discussion to address the alarming trend. Last July 15, Sen. Marco Rubio questioned Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson, the current nominee for next U.S. ambassador to Mexico, on how she would address this trend with the Mexican government, the ICC report said.
ICC estimated that more than 70 open cases of religious persecution against minority Christian communities, each involving between 20-100 victims, existed in the states of Chiapas, Hidalgo, Oaxaca, Puebla and Guerrero.
ICC said it will now include the state of Jalisco to this list.
