MIAMI, Florida (September 1, 2010)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today strongly condemned this morning’s shooting of the newspaper Noroeste’s installations in Mazatlán. The attacks followed phoned threats over a report it published on gang warfare among local drug cartels.
Two masked men armed with high-powered rifles shot at the building after dropping a leaflet at the main door accusing the federal government of protecting the Sinaloa cartel. The building was empty at the time and there were no injuries, reported the Noroeste Editorial Group’s general manager Manuel Becerra to the IAPA.
IAPA President Alejandro Aguirre, editor of the Miami, Florida, Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Américas, stated his consternation at the incident: “this was not just an attack on news media offices, but an assault on freedom of the press and the public’s right to receive information.”
Robert Rivard, chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information and editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, expressed his “confidence and hope that the investigations will determine responsibility and bring the guilty to justice – it’s one way to halt the violence unleashed in Mexico.”
In the early morning of August 27 the offices of TV station Televisa in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, were the scene of a hand-grenade attack by unidentified assailants, causing damage to the building which was closed at the time. Earlier, drug traffickers had thrown hand grenades at the Televisa premises in Matamoros and Monterrey.
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. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org; http://www.impunidad.com
