Mexico

The Mexican press is facing the constant threat of murders and assaults on journalists and news media, and the threat is increasing amid a climate of impunity and self-censorship. Since the IAPA meeting in Asunción, Paraguay, in March of this year, eight journalists were murdered and there were innumerable attacks on reporters and news media outlets. There are areas where journalists are witness every day to the difficulties of carrying out their work because of the advance of organized crime, and the effects of the battle that that the federal government has launched against these groups and which has resulted in the death of more than 6,000 people up to October 21, among them police officers, members of the military and civilians. From 2006 to date the government has recorded 14,300 homicides linked to organized crime, a large number of them in Chihuahua, Durango, Coahuila, Guerrero, Sinaloa and Jalisco states. Given this climate of general violence and specifically that against the press, the IAPA protested and deplored the fact that Mexico’s new Legislature has not shown the same political will as the previous one, on learning that the Special Committee to Follow Up Attacks Upon Journalists and News Media had been eliminated. The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), in a report issued in August, held that the judiciary is not fulfilling its job to protect the rights of journalists. “Impunity persists because in most cases of attacks upon journalists because our systems of justice tend to be increasingly overlooked or ineffective,” declared José Luis Soberanes, the agency’s head. From 2000 to 2009 the CNDH recorded the death of 53 journalists or press workers, in addition to the disappearance of seven others, among then Alfredo Jiménez Mota, a reporter with the Sonora newspaper El Imparcial, a case that the IAPA submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in March. The IAPA´s demand that crimes against press freedom be federal crimes is still pending in the legislature. On the other hand, some governments still control the media by granting or withholding official advertising. With respect to access to government information, Jacqueline Peschard, president of the Access to Public Information Institute, reported publicly that there are sectors in the government of President Felipe Calderón that resist transparency. She said changes are being considered that would have an official agency review the resolutions of the institute. This would seriously weaken her job. These are the cases of the eight murdered journalists: On May 3 journalist Carlos Ortega Samper was shot three times in the head and killed in the township of Santa María El Oro, Durango state, where he was correspondent for the newspaper Tiempo de Durango, which is published in the state capital. Ortega Samper had written about corruption of local government officials. On May 26 the body was discovered of Eliseo Barrón Hernández, a reporter for the Torreón, Coahuila, newspaper La Opinión, with a gunshot wound to the head. He had been abducted from his home in Gómez Palacios, Durango. Barrón Hernández, correspondent of newspapers Milenio, had written about corruption in the local police force. On July 12 Javier Martín Miranda Avilés, a reporter for the newspaper Panorama and correspondent of the news and analysis agency Quadratin, was found stabbed to death at his home in Zitacuaro, Michoacán. On July 14 Ernesto Montañez Valdivia, editor of the magazine “Enfoque,” published by the newspaper Sol de Chihuahua, was shot to death in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, as he was riding in a vehicle being driven by his son. On July 28 in Acapulco, Guerrero, the Public Safety Office reported that the half-buried body had been discovered of Juan Daniel Martinez Gil, a reporter and correspondent of the W Radio network. He had been severely beaten. On September 24 an armed group killed journalist Norberto Miranda Madrid as he was working in the newsroom of the online newspaper in Nuevo Casas Grandes township, Chihuahua. He had devoted his column “Cotorreando con el Gallito” (Chatting with the Rooster) to criticizing the increase in violence in the area. On October 11 the body was discovered of radio host Fabián Ramírez López of regional radio station La Magia 97.1 on the outskirts of Mazatlán, Sinaloa. He had gone missing 48 hours earlier, after leaving his home for work. On November 2 the murder occurred of Bladimir Antuna García, a reporter with the Durango newspaper El Tiempo, who covered public safety and justice matters. He was abducted that morning and 12 hours later his body showing signs of torture was discovered. He had been strangled and around his neck hung a sign saying “This is what happened to me for giving information to the soldiers and for writing more than I should.” Among innumerable acts of violence against journalists and media were the following: On April 19 Mario Robles, a cartoonist with the newspaper Noticias Voz e Imagen de Oaxaca, reported that he had been seriously beaten and given a death threat by member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). On May 27 Veracruz reporter and columnist Fidel Pérez Sánchez was reported missing, and his family filed a formal notice with the Attorney General’s Office. He appeared with signs of having been beaten 24 hours later. On August 18 the building of the newspaper El Siglo de Torreón in Coahuila was shot at by unidentified assailants; there were no reports of injuries, only damage to the building, the paper said. On August 29 unidentified assailants shot at the home of Oaxaca journalist Guillermo Bejarano Soto in Salina Cruz port. On September 8 the weekly newspaper Río Doce in Culiacán, Sinaloa, was the scene of a hand-grenade attack by a criminal gang.