It urges effective steps be taken to halt violence
Miami (January 11, 2011)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today condemned an attack on the building of the Monterrey, Mexico, newspaper El Norte – the second such assault on a news media outlet in that country so far this year.
It was in the early hours of today that armed men hurled a hand grenade at the offices of the Reforma Group’s publication La Silla, which is put out by El Norte, causing damage to the premises but with no injuries reported. The attack was in the southern part of Monterrey, capital of Nuevo León and just a few hours after it was learned of threats made by organized crime that it would act against any news media that reported on its unlawful activities and acts of violence.
IAPA President Gonzalo Marroquín, editor of the Guatemala City, Guatemala newspaper Prensa Libre, expressed outrage at the attack and regretted that “2011 has begun in Mexico with signs of continuing violence against news media.”
In a similar incident on Saturday (January 8) two grenades were thrown at the building of the Televisa television network in Piedras Negras, in the northern state of Coahuila. They failed to explode.
For his part, the co-chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, editor of the Uruguayan weekly news magazine Búsqueda, called on the Mexican authorities to “take action to put an end to the crisis of violence besetting many parts of the country” and invited the news media to “confront the situation by demonstrating solidarity and unity.”
The IAPA reported that in 2010 the violence in Mexico had taken the lives of 11 journalists and there had been more than a dozen attacks on news media offices.
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
