MIAMI, Florida (May 2)-Just a few hours before commemoration of World Press Freedom Day, the Inter American Press Associations Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information said it regretted that there was "little to celebrate" on such an important occasion and protested the murder of yet another journalist in Mexico.
Reporter and radio news anchor José Ramírez Puente, 29, was murdered on Friday (April 28) and his body was dumped inside his automobile parked on a street in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua state. He had been stabbed 35 times. Ramírez covered political affairs for the Radio Net radio station in Ciudad Juárez. He had previously worked at two other radio stations and for the daily newspaper Norte there.
Controversy surrounds the murder, the IAPA said. Investigations into it were moved from state to federal jurisdiction, as several bags of marijuana were said to have been found in the trunk of Ramírez automobile. Relatives and colleagues said they believed the drugs had been planted there to discredit Ramirez professional and personal conduct.
"This is the 13th murder of a journalist in the past six months, three of them in Mexico, and this demonstrates that we will have little to celebrate in the Americas on such an important day as Press Freedom Day tomorrow," said Rafael Molina, chairman of the IAPA Press Freedom Committee.
May 3 was declared
annual World Press Freedom Day by the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1991.
"We urge the Mexican authorities to mark World Press Freedom
Day by do everything in their power to ensure this crime and others
like it are fully and promptly investigated and the guilty brought
to justice under the full weight of the law," added Molina,
El Nacional, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
On learning of the new slaying, the IAPA immediately deployed its newly-formed Rapid Response Unit to Ciudad Juárez to conduct its own investigation. Reporters for the Unit recently have gone to the Mexican city of Matamoros in Tamaulipas state and Harlington, Texas - where the body of Mexican journalist Pablo Pineda Gaucín, a photographer and reporter for the La Opinión newspaper of Matamoros, was found.
Read about this latest investigation on IAPAs special Web site: www.impunidad.com
FUENTE: nota.texto7
