Italian journalist and professor Giovanni Proiettis, a resident of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas for 18 years, was summarily deported back to his home country April 15, Proceso reports.
The reasons for the deportation are not clear. El Mundo, citing an AFP story, reports that immigration authorities claim he was “expelled for engaging in a profession beyond that which was authorized.” Proiettis was a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas, as well as a contributor to the blog Il Manifesto.
According to the Italian wire service ANSA, the journalist’s friends say his deportation was related to an incident between the professor and President Felipe Calderón during a December 2010 UN Climate Change conference in Cancun, Mexico (reporters covering environmental protesters during the event reported attacks from police).
Narco News reports that this is the second time Proiettis has been arrested: several days after the UN protests, he was detained by the Chiapas police in a case of “mistaken identity.” Narco News gathered signatures from other journalists, intellectuals, and activists, who “demand the return of Giovanni Proiettis to Mexico.”
Read commentary and Proiettis’ account of the deportation process on the Narco News site.
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.
