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Journalists Norma Sarabia, Mexico and Pétion Rospide, Haiti, were murdered this week.
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Managua, Nicaragua (June 12, 2019)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) vehemently condemned today the recent murders of journalists Norma Sarabia in Mexico and Pétion Rospide in Haiti and called on the authorities of both countries for a prompt investigation and justice in order to prevent those responsible from going unpunished.

"We condemn the crimes and urge the governments of Mexico and Haiti to investigate urgently, identify and punish those responsible for these murders," declared María Elvira Domínguez, IAPA president and editor of the Colombian newspaper El País, who is heading an international delegation of the organization that is in Nicaragua to deal with issues concerning freedom of expression and of the press in the Central American country.

In Mexico, Norma Sarabia, correspondent of the newspaper Tabasco Hoy, was murdered yesterday (June 11) in the town of Huimanguillo in the state of Tabasco. According to local media that evening Sarabia was going upstairs to enter her home when armed assailants riding a motorcycle shot her.

She worked for more than 15 years at the newspaper where she covered the police beat. The murder of Sarabia, the sixth journalist to be killed this year in Mexico, is added to those of Telésforo Santiago, Omar Iván Camacho, Santiago Barroso Alfaro, Jesús Eugenio Ramos and Rafael Murúa Manríquez.

Roberto Rock, chairman of the IAPA's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information and editor of the Mexican online news portal La Silla Rota, added also from Managua that "we continue to reiterate the duty of governments to protect the free and safe practice of journalism as a sign of freedom of expression that must exist in a democracy."

In Haiti Pétion Rospide, a journalist of Radio Sin Fin, was killed in Port-au-Prince on Monday (June 10) within the framework of an increase in violence and protests in the country to call for the resignation of President Jovenel Moise. Rospide, 45, was returning home in a radio station vehicle when an identified person shot him.

In his last radio broadcast he referred to accusations of corruption made against the president and an attack on broadcast station Radio TV Ginen. Local journalists and media have reported attacks during the protests. Following the murder, the National Association of Haitian Media (ANNH) and the Association of Independent Media of Haiti (AMIH) called for safety and to be left to work in freedom.

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 publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida.

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