IAPA delegation to meet with Mexican state and federal officials in February
Miami (January 20, 2010)–The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed alarm at another journalist’s murder in Mexico and announced it will send an international mission to the country to meet with President Felipe Calderón and government officials. Mission members will push for greater political will to drive legal reforms and protective measures against the violence and impunity that are affecting the press.
The IAPA’s reaction came after Saturday’s discovery of the body of the second Mexican reporter to be murdered this year. The body of José Luis Romero, 43, a reporter with the radio station Línea Directa, was found with signs of torture on January 16 at the side of Los Mochis to San Blas highway in El Fuerte, northern Sinaloa province. His whereabouts had been unknown since he was kidnapped on December 30.
IAPA President Alejandro Aguirre, managing editor of the Miami, Florida, Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Américas, declared, “We must be attent to this apparently uncontrollable level of violence. We stand in solidarity with Mexican journalists and we repeat to that country’s leaders the need for greater political will to confront this problem that casts a shadow over the public’s right to information and to urgently seek new ways to immobilize this terror.”
Juan Francisco Ealy Ortiz, chairman of the IAPA’s Impunity Committee and president of the Mexico City newspaper El Universal, announced that on February 14 to 17 an IAPA international delegation will hold meetings with President Felipe Calderón and other federal and state officials “to push for strategies that will more efficiently defend press freedom.”
Aguirre and Ealy Ortiz recalled that for more than 10 years the IAPA has recommended that crimes against journalists be made federal offenses, that crimes against freedom of expression be regarded as aggravated and that there be no statute of limitations in these cases; it has also advocated measures to protect journalists as well as the reorganization of the Office of Special Prosecutor for Crimes Committed Against Journalists, an agency of the Mexican Attorney General’s Office.
Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, stated, “I am absolutely certain that had the Mexican authorities shown greater political will and adopted in due time the legislation and protective measures we have proposed repeatedly to the three branches of government, today there would surely exist better conditions for combating the violence and impunity in crimes against journalists.”
According to preliminary inquiries by authorities the murder of Romero, who covered security and legal matters, is possibly linked to organized crime. Shortly after his abduction Romero was shot three times, twice in the head, according to police information. The day his body was discovered Municipal Police received an anonymous telephone call telling them where the body was to be found.
Romero’s murder follows that of Valentín Valdés Espinosa, killed in Coahuila state on January 8. A total of 11 newsmen were slain in Mexico in 2009.
For more information of the murder of José Luis Romero go to:http://www.impunidad.com/index.php?shownews=444&idioma=us
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. The IAPA’s Impunity Project is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and it mission is to combat violence against journalists and reduce the impunity surrounding the majority of such crimes. http://www.sipaiapa.org; http://www.impunidad.com
