Mexico

MEXICO Despite an improvement in the general human rights situation, it has not been possible to create a culture of respect for freedom of the press among the bureaucracy,which in many cases combats such freedom from a position of power and makes the press subject to subtle but effective government censorship. From March to October this year, four journalists were murdered, one was kidnapped and intimidated, two fired from their jobs for reporting on an electoral dispute, and a television station was shut down. In addition, a newspaper was vandalized and ta journalist'S office was searched. There were aliso complaints of acts of government repression of journalists. In March, a Radio Azul commentator was murdered in Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan, by an individual identified as a policeman. On April 23, Diario de Morelos reporter Alejandro Campos Moreno was shot and killed. On July 3, Victor Manuel Oropeza, a writer for the newspaper EI Diario de Juarez, was killed. The death of this respected physician, widely known as a democratic political activist, brought to 21 the number of journalists killed in the past three years, according to figures from the National Human Rights Commission. On July 16, Excelsior contributor Raul Cremoux publicly announced that he had been kidnapped, abused and threatened six days earlier. In Nayarit, the local television repeater station was shut down after a reporter broadcast an interview containing disaparaging remarks about a PRI congressional candidate. Reporters Berta Teresa Ramirez, Magdelena Robles and Miguel Angel Pedrero were fired from the government's Channel 11 for reporting in their newcasts on complaints of irregularities in elections in Guanajuato and Mexico states. The plant of the morning newspaper Cambia of Puebla was damaged August 13 by a group of assailants. On September 3, the offices in Cancun of the journalist Ignacio Mendoza were searched, apparently with the aim of intimidating him. He had said he would stage a hunger strike in Mexico City to protest what he called a climate of repression in the State of Quintana Roo. In Matamoros, Tamaulipas, La Opini6n and La Calle accused the municipal authorities of hampering circulation of their editions. The Mayor's office contended that street vendors engaged in obscenities by hawking the newspaper, which it said often contained indecent material. A young television journalist, Gabriel Venegas Valencia, was murdered in mid-October. He had disappeared October 11 after finishing work at his television station. He was found was dead four days later. Vanegas covered a labor beat, often reporting on strikes and labor dispute. Mexican journalists are being confronted with a "moralizing" campaign, which amounts to censorship. Through the Qualifying Committee for Publications and Illustrated Magazines, the Secretary of Government sent a communique to the Diaria Metro of Monterrey objecting to its publication of photos of semi-nudes and advertisements for massage parlors. The committee also told the newspaper to obtain permiSSion from health authorities for advertisements for medicines and their claimed healing properties.