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Johan Knelsen Teichroeb, an activist of Mennonite origin that has been fighting GMO crops and the injustice of the banking system in his community, was kidnapped by an armed group Monday, reportedly getting caught in a territorial dispute between two drug cartels in Chihuahua, northern Mexico. His family confirmed his safe return home Wednesday afternoon.
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Witnesses say Knelsen was at home when a group forced entry and forced him into a black truck. Prosecutors said there was not enough information available for a concrete declaration about the motive of the crime and Knelsen has made no public statements so far.
One of his activism partners, Gabino Gomez, a member of the Campesino organization El Barzon, and head of the forced disappearances unit of the Women’s Human Rights Center (Cedehm), said Tuesday that the forced disappearance of Knelsen might have been related to extortion by cartels rather than to his activism.
Knelsen is known in the region for his activism against bank abuses and illegal GMO crops that brought him into confrontration with Monsanto in the 1990s. The El Barzon activist is part of the Mennonite community in Chihuahua and lives in Field 106, Cuauhtemoc, a region threatened by the presence of at least two rival drug cartels. According to Gomez, the danger has only been increasing.
“This is more related to the climate of insecurity, to the climate of violence in this region because it is disputed by various organized crime groups. Right there at the border between the Namiquipa and Cuauhtemoc cartels is a region that has turned into a disputed zone for extortion,” said Gomez. “The Mennonites have been targets for this crime. He [Knelssen] had been victim of extortion some time ago.”
Gomez says Knelsen was not a leader of the movement despite his visible participation and arrest in the 1990s, and discards a purely political motive behind his abduction. He added that El Barzon has not demanded protection for his family, but that he’s in contact with them.
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Greenpeace and other international and local organizations expressed their concerns about Knelsen’s situation. They also demanded that authorities locate him as soon as possible, and provide his family and other members of El Barzon with protection.
Gabino Gomez deals with disappearances in the state of Chihuahua on a daily basis. According to official figures, Chihuahua is a state with the sixth highest number of disappearances with 2,186 reports between 2007 and April 2018. He regrets high profile cases, but points out that many of the missing people are never reported or don’t find a place in media.
“I rarely find a day in which they’re not calling me on the matter. There’s a red flag especially in the western zone,” said Gomez.
Being a border state, Chihuahua is a region severely affected by drug trafficking and disputes between cartels. Environmental activists and journalists suffer from the increasingly violent conditions.
On Oct. 24, the Indigenous Raramuri leader and land defender Julian Carrillo was killed by an armed group in the municipality of Coloradas de la Virgen, where he was a communal leader. Five other members of his family have been killed over the last two years.
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