MIAMI, Florida (August 30, 2010)—Journalists throughout Mexico have come together to urge authorities to being those guilty of the murder or disappearance of journalists – some 70 in the last decade – to justice.
Their street protest is in line with the insistence that the Inter American Press Association (IAP) has been making to the Mexican federal government that such crimes be made federal offenses, that the applicable statutes of limitations be extended, that the penalties be stiffened and there be a system of protection of journalists.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of newspaper readers in the Americas have been invited by the IAPA to add their signatures to a letter to Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón asking him to set up legal mechanisms to enable the increasing violence against journalists and news media to be confronted and halted, once and for all putting an end to the impunity surrounding it, urging that those identified and found guilty be subjected to the full weight of the law: www.impunidad.com
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 Impunity Project is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and has the mission of combating violence against journalists and lessening the impunity surrounding the majority of such crimes: http://www.sipiapa.org
