The Mexican organization Artículo 19 has begun a signature-gathering campaign to ask the president of the country, Enrique Peña Nieto, to take action to guarantee the safety of Mexican journalists, said the newspaper Periódico Central.
The organization hopes to get a million signatures for their petition, called Impunidad Mata (Impunity Kills), by April 29. The petition asks the president to grant additional powers to an already existing special prosecutor's office so that it can “achieve its objective of protecting Mexican journalists and society's right to be informed,” says a part of the petition.
In 2006, as a response to the wave of anti-press violence, the government of then-President Vicente Fox created the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Attention to Crimes against Freedom of Expression (Feadle), with the objective of “generating a circle of legal, procedural, and operative protection that can put a stop to the dramatic rise in violence against journalists,” said the magazine Eme Equis.
Artículo 19 says that Feadle “could reach truth, justice, and reparation for the grave aggressions against journalists,” but because of limitations in its legal framework, resources and autonomy it has not been able to. The organization added that the situation could be rectified by Peña Nieto if he so decides.
The petition can be signed on Change.org.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
