Miami (October 4, 2010)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today condemned an attack on the newspaper El Debate in the city of Mazatlán, in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, called for a prompt investigation and insisted that urgent action be taken to protect journalists and news media and thus ensure freedom of the press.
The El Debate offices were shot at by unidentified assailants at 5:15 a.m. yesterday (October 3). The paper reported in its Sunday online edition that some 17 shots were fired, apparently from AR-15 and AK-47 rifles, hitting the public entrance to the building.
IAPA President Alejandro Aguirre, editor of the Miami, Florida, Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Américas, urged the Mexican federal government “to redouble efforts to ensure the safety of news media, journalists and employees,” as President Felipe Calderón had promised several weeks ago to representatives of the IAPA and the Committee to Protect Journalists during a meeting with him in Mexico City.
For his part, the chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, agreed with Aguirre on the urgent need “for swift and coordinated action to put an end to the violence afflicting the country.”
At the time of the attack in the building were security staff and circulation department employees, who were unhurt in this new assault on the newspaper’s publishing company, El Debate S.A., whose premises in Culiacán were also attacked two years ago – on November 16, 2008, when two hand grenades were hurled at the entrance to that building, smashing walls and windows. Then on February 9, 2009 the home of the editor of the sister newspaper in Guasave was shot at. There were no injuries in those other two incidents.
Earlier this year other attacks have been reported on the Grupo Editorial del Noroeste de Mazatlán publishing company and on the weekly newspaper Río Doce, both in Sinaloa state, and on Noticias de El Sol de la Laguna newspaper in Coahuila. In addition, there have been attacks on the offices of the Televisa television network in Coahuila, Nayarit, Tamaulipas and Nuevo León states, producing slight damage in each case.
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. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org
