16 October 2008

IAPA condemns attack on journalist’s home in Mexico and demands prompt, unified action to end violence and impunity

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Miami (October 16, 2008) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today called on Mexico’s authorities to take immediate steps to end the violence waged against the press. The plea followed an assault rifle attack this morning on the home of a journalist in Nogales, Sonora.
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Miami (October 16, 2008) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today called on Mexico’s authorities to take immediate steps to end the violence waged against the press. The plea followed an assault rifle attack this morning on the home of a journalist in Nogales, Sonora.

Vicente Bórquez Rivas, Diario del Yaqui correspondent and reporter for local radio station Grupo Fórmula, was at home with his wife and two children at around 6:30 a.m. when unidentified assailants fired R-15 and AK-47 rifles at the building. The family was unharmed. Nogales, across the Mexican border from Arizona, is the city with the highest numbers of violence linked to the illegal narcotics trade in that country.

IAPA President Enrique Santos Calderón expressed concern at “the constant attacks on journalists who ensure their safety and that of their family members by resorting to self-censorship and not reporting on drug trafficking activities, the main source of violence in Mexico.”

Santos Calderón, co-editor of the Bogotá, Colombia, newspaper El Tiempo, called on local and federal officials to “launch, urgently, a coordinated plan to put an end to the impunity surrounding those who resort to violence and to ensure the uninhibited practice of journalism, free of intimidation, so that the human right to express oneself and receive information is fulfilled.”

The attack on Bórquez Rivas’ home occurred less than a week after the murder of Miguel Angel Villagómez, editor of the newspaper La Nación in Michoacán and shortly after Alejandro Fonseca Estrada was killed on September 23 in Tabasco.
         

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