24 February 2016

México: murder of journalist

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IAPA outraged at murder of journalist in Mexico, calls for investigation


MIAMI, Florida (February 24, 2015)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today condemned the murder of Moisés Dagdug Lutzow, journalist and communication businessman, in Tabasco state, and called on the authorities to speedily investigate to determine who was responsible.


The body of Dagdug, 65, was found by his employees last Saturday (February 20) at his home in Villahermosa city. Unidentified persons were understood to have entered the house, stabbed him and taken off with his vehicle, which was later found abandoned.


The chairman of the IAPA's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, protested the murder and offered his sympathy to the journalist's family and colleagues.


Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, urged the authorities to investigate seriously and in-depth to learn the causes, identify those responsible and bring them to justice. He added that "to solve a crime is the only antidote to impunity."


"If the government of Mexico does not act seriously and truthfully in the matter, once and for all, journalists in that country will continue dying like flies and the effect will be a growing self-censorship and increasingly poor information received by the people concerning matters of direct interest to them," Paolillo declared.


Dagdug was owner of Grupo VX and was director of Tabasco radio station XEVX La Grande since 1980. He also hosted the weekly program "De frente Tabasco" (About Tabasco) on the company's television channel TVX. He was a member of the federal assembly for the Revolución Democrática party (PRD) from 2006 to 2009. His journalistic style was characterized by his criticisms of the state government.


He had received death threats, Ángel Antonio Jiménez, news director of the Grupo VX, told local media.


Paolillo said that this was the third murder of a journalist in Mexico this year. On February 8 Anabel Flores Salazar, a stringer for the newspaper El Sol de Orizaba, was kidnapped in Veracruz and her body was found the following day on the Puebla state border. On January 21 the murder occurred of Marcos Hernández Bautista, correspondent of the newspaper Noticias, Voz e Imagen de Oaxaca. In 2015 another four journalists were murdered – Rubén Espinosa, Filadelfo Sánchez Sarmiento, Armando Saldaña Morales and Moisés Sánchez Cerezo.


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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