Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto again requested asylum for himself and his son in an El Paso immigration court, 10 years after they turned themselves into a checkpoint at the U.S.-Mexico border and more than a year after their claim was denied.
An engineer and radio host in Acapulco, Guerrero was killed on the evening of Oct. 24 after armed people shot at the news van he was driving while returning from an assignment.
The public prosecutor's office of Chiapas confirmed the detention of a man in connection with the Sept. 21 murder of Mario Gómez, a reporter for El Heraldo de Chiapas in Mexico who was shot in the town of Yajalón while leaving his home to complete some work, according to the paper where he was employed. The official said announcements about others implicated in the case could be forthcoming.
The outgoing government of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has assigned 75 million Mexican pesos (US $4 million) to the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists and ensured its operation through the end of the year.
Although Mexico is known as one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists, the threat to media professionals in the country is not just physical. In many cases, the enemies of freedom of expression and of the press resort not to arms, but to the courts, in an attempt to silence journalistic coverage that goes against their interests.
Latin American newsrooms won four big honors at the 2018 Online Journalism Awards, prestigious prizes recognizing excellent digital journalism.
The Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists will run out of funding at the end of September, mobilizing press advocates to demand the federal government guarantee resources for the program to continue.
The association Periodistas Desplazados Mexico (Displaced Journalists Mexico) is asking the new government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to politically and legally recognize journalists and media workers who are victims of forced internal displacement caused by violence in the country in the last decade.
Another journalist has been killed in Quintana Roo, the third media professional to be murdered in the Mexican state in the past two months. Motives behind his death are still unclear, but journalists and media organizations are calling on authorities to explore all possible lines of investigation.
The lack of commitment on the part of the federal and state prosecutors of Mexico and other authorities to follow the recommendations given by the National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH, for its initials in Spanish) is the reason for the "prevailing impunity" in attacks against journalists, the human rights organization said.
ProPublica and its media allies in Latin America and the U.S. have asked the public to submit information about detained immigrants through online forms that feed a database shared with participating media.
Mexican reporter Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, who is seeking asylum in the U.S., was released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in El Paso on the afternoon of July 26 after seven months in detention.