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MEXICO Politicians and rulers, bowing on occasions to economic power, have led the serious attacks against journalists. Mexican editors have advanced in the unity of their profession, permitting Mexican journalists to spell out specific actions to form a common front against the aggressors. Significant events during this period: Last February 6, an armed group assaulted the installations of the newspaper El Mañana in the border city of Nuevo Laredo in the state of Tamaulipas, one of the zones in the country most affected by organized crime. When it broke into the office, the group fired machinegun rounds and threw a hand grenade in what appeared to be an extreme act of intimidation, because it did not attack journalists or employees directly. Several shots pierced a false wall and entered the back of journalist Jaime Orozco Tey, who suffered injuries that affected his ability to walk. El Mañana has been distinguished by its coverage of the violence that affects the community. On January 26 and 27, it hosted a seminar sponsored by the IAPA and the newspapers El Universal of Mexico City and El Imparcial of Hermosillo. This seminar, attended by more than 150 journalists from the border zone, from the United States and other countries, focused on raising the technical, material and ethical standards in the coverage of high-risk affairs, especially drug-trafficking. El Mañana officials said that they did not know the source of the attack, but announced a new editorial policy that would avoid the publication of information about organized crime. The declaration added one more to the dozens of newspapers, magazines and radio and television programs that have been muzzled because of fear. A few hours after the attack, the IAPA condemned the occurrence in a press release in which it asked Mexican authorities to directly investigate the attack. The Mexican press also took its most firm and widespread stance in several decades. Almost fifty newspapers and publishing houses joined the campaign through a published public service advertisement, gathering signatures in support of the demand, “No to violence, no to silence.” The same advertisement informed the public about an agreement established in the Nuevo Laredo seminar to undertake the “Phoenix Project.” This project brings together journalists from several newspaper companies to further the investigations that their murdered colleagues had begun. The results of these new investigations will be published simultaneously in dozens of newspapers throughout the country that have joined this project. On March 9, journalist Jaime Arturo Olvera Bravo was shot to death, holding the hand of his young son, as the two were walking toward a bus terminal in the town of La Piedad in the central state of Michoacán. An unidentified man, who witnesses say had been laying in wait for at least an hour, shot the journalist in the head and fled in a vehicle that had been standing by with its motor on. Olvera Bravo, who covered the police beat, had been a correspondent for the state newspaper La Voz, and continued to collaborate with several newspapers. The authorities have not presented a conclusive report about this case. On December 16, journalist and social activist Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, a stringer for several newspapers and author of the book Los demonios del edén (The Demons of Eden), was arrested in Cancún, Quintana Roo. In her book, she had revealed connections between several businessmen and politics with child sex rings and in particular with Jean Surcar Kuri, who had been arrested in the United States with a extradition request. The journalist was subjected to various insults in the suit presented by businessman Kamel Nacif Borge, who was discussed in the above mentioned book. The Puebla court transferred the case to Cancún, where the suit continues. Recently, recordings of telephone conversations were circulated, indicating that everything came about as a result of a conspiracy to protect the alleged pederast, with the participation of the complainant, Kamel Nacif, and the Puebla governor himself, Mario Marín. In the face of outcry from the public and organizations such as the IAPA, the Mexican government ordered the creation of a special prosecutor´s office to investigate crimes against journalists. The new special prosecutor, David Vega Vera, has time counting against him, because the present administration will end next December. In the first five years of the present government, 208 attacks against journalists have been reported, almost 60 percent more than in the previous five years. The above mentioned prosecutor will coordinate the investigations of those who have been brought by the federal authority, which include four cases: Francisco Ortiz Franco, Guadalupe García Escamilla, Raúl Guerrero and Alfredo Jiménez Mota. On March 10, the government of the state of Chiapas, headed up by Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía, sent a proposal to the local congress that would strike down reforms to the criminal code referring to libel. The same state administration had been promoting strengthening of libel laws since February 2004. As recently as last February, Mexican journalist Ángel Mario Kshersatto was jailed briefly on charges of libel and freed on bail Another conflict about which the IAPA has issued frequent declarations concerns the newspaper Noticias of Oaxaca, affected by a labor strike during seven months. The newspaper editors have claimed that the strike was fomented by the state government. Last March 11, it was reported that a judge ordered the end of the strike and a return of the installations to their rightful owners. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States, in a document dated October 30, 2005, established measures of caution to protect the president of Grupo Noticias, Ericel Gómez Nucamendi and 116 workers from the newspaper Noticias of Oaxaca in the face of harassment and persecution by the government of that state. Since June 2005, Noticias has faced a strike cooked up by the CROC and the government of Oaxaca, headed by governor Ulises Ruíz, although the strike has been rejected by printing press workers. On October 21, 2005, journalist Concepción Villafuerte, editor of the newspaper La Foja in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, charged that individuals from the municipal police indicated that they had received orders to assassinate her. She said that the policemen has declared that they feared for their integrity, as well as for that of their families. In Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, agents for the Department of Customs and Border Protection of the United States detained two journalists from El Diario de El Paso, Texas, a subsidiary of El Diario de Juárez, published in Spanish. The journalists were arrested on the international bridge Paso del Norte-Santa Fe, accused of taking photographs without permission and of violating the Patriot Act, designed to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. On January 2, the journalist Oscar Solis Gurrola was reported disappeared. Beaten and with two broken ribs, the journalist reappeared at home last January 4. Solis Gurrola covered the beat of La Laguna for the newspaper El Vespertino of Torreón. The journalist related that unknown assailants set upon him as he was on his way home, and, after covering his head with a sheepskin jacket, beat him up. His captors allowed him to call his relatives. More than eight years ago, the editor of the magazine Adelante, Cuauhtémoc Ornelas Campos, disappeared, and his whereabouts are still unknown. It should be underscored that just between March 2004 and March 2006, 11 press workers have been murdered in Mexico. This coming April, an additional journalist will have completed a year of disappearance, with little hope that he will be found alive. Of these 12 cases, in at least six, there is evidence that links these crimes directly to their journalistic tasks. The responsibility for these attacks is attributed to organized crimes, in particular, drug-traffickers. In the other six cases, authorities have argued that the attacks were motivated by common crime or by other aspects of the journalists´ activities, including their intimate lives, and not related to freedom of expression. Nevertheless, neither families nor the journalistic entities for which they worked, nor public opinion, have received conclusive information that would permit them to definitively rule out the hypothesis that the attacks were provoked by the exercise of their journalistic profession. On February 8 of this year,
journalists, academics and legislators presented to the Federal Chamber of Deputies
twenty proposals for a federal reform that would decriminalize libel and slander,
so-called “press crimes,” in Mexico. The proposals also included
the automatic referral of crimes against journalists to federal jurisdiction,
the elevation of professional secrecy to a constitutional right, the institution
of a right to reply and an updating of the Press Law.
Copyright © 2003 Inter American Press Association. All rights reserved. . |
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