Miami (October 10, 2008)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed outrage at the murder of Miguel Angel Villagómez, editor of the Mexican newspaper La Noticia de Michoacán and urged the authorities to begin an immediate investigation to determine who carried out the crime and who was behind it.
The body of Villagómez, who was also the founder of the newspaper located in the port city of Lázaro Cárdenas, was found at 5 o’clock this morning beside a highway leading to the city of Zihuatanejo in the neighboring state of Guerrero near the town of La Unión. He disappeared at 10:00 p.m. last night, according to local press reports. He bore bullet wounds on his back and neck.
“We continue to protest how freely in Mexico murderers act and go unpunished after eliminating those they regard as a nuisance,” declared the recently appointed chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Robert Rivard, of the Texas newspaper San Antonio Express-News. “It’s urgent that Mexican authorities put an end to the violence unleashed by organized crime, in particular against the press and individual journalists.”
Rivard quoted the conclusions of the IAPA’s recent annual meeting, held in Madrid, Spain, October 3-7, which stressed the negative consequences of the violence generated by organized crime in Mexico, especially by drug traffickers, in their effort to obstruct newsgathering in that country.
Since 2006 in Michoacán, regarded as one of Mexico’s most violent states, La Opinión reporter Gerardo Israel García Pimentel and freelance news photographer Jaime Arturo Olvera Bravo were murdered, while the whereabouts remain unknown of Mauricio Estrada Zamora of La Opinión, radio and television personality Juan Pablo Solís and José Antonio García Apac of Ecos de la Cuenca.
