Prominent Mexican Gay Rights Activist Christian Ivan Sanchez Venancio Killed Saturday Inside Mexico City Residence

Fox News Latino is reporting that a gay rights activist was murdered over the weekend at his Mexico City home, a Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, commission said, adding that Christian Ivan Sanchez Venancio's killing was a hate crime. Sanchez Venancio, who served as the leftist PRD's sexual diversity commissioner in the Federal District, was stabbed to death at his residence. Sanchez Venancio’s body was found on Saturday at his home, the PRD's National Commission on Sexual Diversity said in a statement. Authorities should investigate Sanchez Venancio's killing "as a hate crime" since he sustained "brutal wounds," the head of the commission, Diana Sanchez Barrios, said. Officials should not make "the mistake of considering this criminal act a 'crime of passion,' the explanation long used to close investigations of killings of members of sexual minorities," Sanchez Barrios said. "The hate murder that our brother, Christian, was a victim of should not go unpunished. It has rocked our party by impacting not only the Commission on Sexual Diversity of the Federal District, of which he was a member, but also our lives and our hearts," Sanchez Barrios said.