Letter reveals dramatic panorama of Mexico’s press

News men and women are alarmed at “the state of lack of safety and the violence that has turned Mexico into the most dangerous country not engaged in a civil war to work as a journalist,” say various Mexican journalist labor unions, professional organizations and publications that are signatories to a letter of complaint delivered to Mexican Attorney General Arturo Chávez Chávez in which they declare that “impunity is today one of the principal causes that attacks upon the work of the press are proliferating.” The description, timed to mark International Human Rights Day and published in the Michoacán newspaper El Regional under the byline of Eduardo Ibarra Aguirre, stated that “there is nothing to commemorate on this date,” but rather what was awaited was to hear of the commitment of the new Attorney General to tackle the problem of impunity. The note was given the support of international bodies defending freedom of the press, such as the IAPA which has for several years now been bringing to Mexican federal and state authorities’ attention to need to speedily punish those guilty of attacks on and disappearances and murders of journalists, stiffen penalties, make such offenses not subject to statutes of limitations, and pay reparations when the case calls for that. The newspaper recalled that 12 journalists have been murdered in Mexico in 2009 and there are nine others that are missing since 2000, with a continuing “serious indifference and silence on the part of the Attorney General’s Office – a panorama unprecedented in the history of Mexico.”