More than 1,000 reporters, editors, camera operators and photographers took to the streets in Mexico City and other towns in 11 states in defense of freedom of expression, calling for an end to violence against journalists, which has claimed at least 64 lives in the last decade, and left another 11 missing, reported the Latin American Herald Tribune and CBS News.
Rodolfo Flórez, who has been missing since July 9, was found in Cali on Aug. 5 in good health, but confused and upset, reported the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) via IFEX.
As Mexican journalists are finalizing the details of their protest this Saturday against violence and threats against the country’s media workers, President Felipe Calderón met with media owners and editors to pledge federal government support, El Universal and La Jornada report.
The Prosecutor’s Office has opened a case into this week’s molotov cocktail bomb attack against the offices of the newspaper Las Noticias, El Universal reports.
Federal police announced the arrest of suspected gang members who allegedly kidnapped three TV journalists in northern Mexico last week, The Associated Press reports.
Drug-related violence in Mexico has not only left more than 28,000 dead since 2006, it has also plunged the local press into a crisis, one that has laid bare the chronic weaknesses of Mexican journalism.
Luis Valdez Villacorta, acquitted in February because of a lack of evidence for the killing of Alberto Rivera, was released from prison in Lima, where he had been incarcerated for 21 months, in order to wait for another trial while under house arrest, reported EFE and La República.
The editor of the newspaper Correio de Notícias, Afonso Locks, was followed and beaten last week in the city of Cerejeiras (in the state of Rondonia), by persons linked to ex-Mayor José Eugênio Zigue de Souza, reported Folha de Rondônia, where the journalist also is a correspondent.
El Comercio reported that Jorge Luis Marimón Lino Montes acknowledged he brutally attacked journalist Ángel Salazar in a dance club, and he announced that he was withdrawing his candidacy for city council.
Fernando Collor de Mello, a former president and current senator, threatened Hugo Marques, a reporter for IstoÉ magazine, for publishing an article about efforts to invalidate his candidacy for governor of Alagoas state, O Globo reports.
Martín López, a journalist and host at Canal 44 in Ciudad Juárez, has joined the ranks of media workers who have sought asylum in the U.S. border city of El Paso, after receiving threats from drug traffickers.
Héctor Gordoa, one of four journalists who were kidnapped this week in Durango state, was dropped off at Televisa’s Torreón offices, where he worked, AFP and La Jornada report.