In the aftermath of the severe beating of a young journalist, a police chief is on the run and journalists are rallying for protection of freedom of expression across Mexico.
As if the dangers of covering crime in one of the riskiest regions of the world for journalists weren’t enough, reporters in Northern Mexico now face new obstacles allegedly created by the authorities who were supposed to protect them.
A new report by Freedom of Expression advocacy organization Article 19-Mexico attributed a continuing trend of attacks against journalists to the Mexican government’s routine failure to prosecute attackers.
Three Mexican journalists in the states of Oaxaca, Veracruz and Guanajuato have been killed in the span of a week.
Mexican journalists in Veracruz and other groups marched on Monday, April 28, to commemorate reporter Regina Martínez, who was killed two years ago on the same day, according to Proceso magazine.
On Saturday April 26, around 7,000 people formed a human chain in front of Mexico’s Senate in protest of a new proposed communications bill that President Enrique Peña Nieto presented last Monday.
On Wednesday April 23, Mexican writer and journalist Elena Poniatowska received the Cervantes Prize at the University of Alcalá in Henares, near Madrid, Spain, according to the newspaper El Universal.
Sixty-six aggressions against the Mexican press were registered during the first quarter of 2014 according to a report published April 22 by the freedom of expression and information organization Article 19.
Only 19 percent of all registered cases of journalists’ homicides and disappearances have been heard by a judge and only 10 percent of those have ended in a sentencing, leaving Mexico’s impunity index at 89 percent, according to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) in a press release on April 20.
On a typically hot and rainy night in the southwestern part of Guerrero, several gunmen briskly walked inside an Internet cafe owned and operated by a married couple who both practiced journalism.
Three Latin American countries were listed in the latest edition of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) Global Impunity Index. Mexico, Colombia and Brazil occupied, respectively, the seventh, eighth and eleventh place on the list.
Journalism is still one of the lowest salaried jobs in Mexico, according to data from the 2013 Mexican National Occupation and Employment Survey.