10 February 2016

IAPA outraged at murder of Mexican female journalist

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It urges in-depth investigation


MIAMI, Florida (February 10, 2015)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed outrage at the murder of Mexican journalist Anabel Flores Salazar, kidnapped early on Monday in Veracruz and whose body was found the following day in the neighboring state of Puebla.


The chairman of the IAPA's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, expressed dismay at the murder and urged the authorities to "carry out a serious, in-depth and caring investigation to truly learn the reasons for the murder and apply all available laws to punish those responsible."


Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, added, "To come up with speculations about the journalist's presumed link with organized crime while she remained missing, as did the Veracruz State Attorney General's Office, increased even further the risk for her personal safety and demonstrates the little professionalism and lack of sensitivity of that state body."


Flores Salazar was kidnapped from her home early on Monday by an armed group in the town of Mariano Escobedo, near Orizaba in Veracruz state. Her body, identified by family members, was found at the side of a highway in Puebla state, some eight miles from the border with Veracruz.


According to the newspaper El Sol de Orizaba Flores Salazar was a freelance reporter for that paper for the past six months and covered the police beat. She had also worked for the Veracruz newspapers El Mundo de Orizaba and El Buen Tono.


Local and international organizations estimate at between 15 and 17 the number of journalists to have been murdered in Veracruz since 2010, a year in which Javier Duarte de Ochoa became the state governor.


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.

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