Violence there will be main item on agenda during its meeting in Argentina
Miami (November 3, 2009)–The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today condemned the murder of journalist Bladimir Antuna García in Durango, Mexico – the 10th this year resulting from the violence that shakes the country. The matter, of great concern to the hemisphere organization, will be featured during its General Assembly in Buenos Aires, Argentina, beginning on Friday.
Antuna García, 39, a reporter with the Durango newspaper El Tiempo, was abducted yesterday morning (November 2), and his body discovered 12 hours later marked by torture. This is the second attack on journalists from El Tiempo and the third murder of a newsman in northern Mexico in six months, according to inquiries made by the IAPA’s Rapid Response Unit in Mexico.
IAPA President Enrique Santos Calderón, editor of the Bogotá, Colombia, newspaper El Tiempo, offered his sympathy to Antuna García’s colleagues and family and pledged that “the dangerous situation that our Mexican colleagues face obliges us to commit to work even harder to meet the challenge.”
Among the leading issues on the busy agenda of the IAPA’s 65th General Assembly in the Argentine capital November 6-10 is a detailed review of violations of freedom of the press in all the countries of the Americas. Violence, new laws that seek to control journalistic content, and judicial harassment of news media and individual journalists will dominate much of the discussions, which will involve around 500 publishers, editors and reporters attending from throughout the Western Hemisphere.
“We also urge Mexico’s Congress and administration to pay closer attention to this issue and re-establish mechanisms that are capable of confronting the violence unleashed against members of the press,” Santos said alluding to the decision by the Chamber of Deputies to eliminate its special committee dedicated to dealing with crimes against journalists and news media, as well as passage of the long-awaited law making crimes against freedom of expression federal offenses.
The chairman of IAPA’s Impunity Committee, Juan Francisco Ealy Ortiz of the Mexico City newspaper El Universal pledged “we will continue to keep Mexico and its journalists as the main focus of our coming activities.” He added that in addition to seminars, conferences and forums held there on organized crime, safety and independence of the press, this year the IAPA will work with the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) to offer online courses on security so the organization can reach more journalists in the interior of the country. “It seems like no matter how much we do for freedom of the press in Mexico, it will never be enough,” Ealy Ortiz added.
Antuna García covered the public safety and justice beats in the city of Durango and had received death threats over the last year. On April 28 he was attacked but escaped unhurt. While the motive for his murder was not immediately known, that it might be linked to his work as a reporter has not been ruled out.
The adjoining northern states of Durango and Coahuila are among the most violent in Mexico. On May 3 Carlos Ortega, El Tiempo correspondent in the township of Santa María del Oro, Durango, was murdered and 23 days later reporter Eliseo Barrón Hernández of the newspaper La Opinión de Milenio in the next-door state of Coahuila was murdered. After that murder Antuna García received another phoned threat warning that he would be next.
In a conversation with the Rapid Response Unit the editor of El Tiempo in Durango, Víctor Manuel Garza, said that following the murders and the threats to Antuna García the newspaper put security measures in place.
Antuna García was driving the streets of Durango around 9:00 a.m. when a pickup truck cut him off and a group of armed men forced him out of his car and into another. Two hours later the police received an anonymous call about the discovery of a body which was later confirmed to be his. The body showed signs of his having been tortured and then strangled.