Just two days after four journalists were kidnapped in Durango state, Ulises González García was abducted from his home in the middle of the night, presumably to be held for ransom, La Jornada reports. The journalist is the director of the weekly paper La Opinión, based in Jerez, Zacatecas in north-central Mexico.
Journalists, public officials, and police chiefs in the northern border state of Chihuahua, one of the areas most effected by drug violence in recent years, are planning to create the country’s first "security protocol for journalists that cover risky areas," Devenir and Ahoramismo report.
At a time when journalists are targets of organized crime and violence against reporters goes largely unpunished, declaring an editorial war against corruption and drug trafficking seems suicidal. According to Prodavinci’s Oscar Medina, this is precisely the journey upon which the weekly Tijuana-based news magazine Zeta has embarked.
Over the first six months of this year, the region has passed Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, as the area with the most journalists killed, the International Press Institute announced in its Six-Month Death Watch report.
Ciudad Juárez is considered one of the most violent cities in the world but last week the city experienced, for the first time in history, a car bomb successfully attacking federal agents. Camerman Luis Hernández Núñez, from the television channel Telecinco, was injured as he recorded the moment of the explosion, reported El Universal.
La Jornada reports that both the Special Prosecutor for Attention to Crimes Against Freedom of Expression and the National Human Rights Commission (NCHR) are investigating the complaint of photojournalist Irineo Mujica Arzate, who is accusing agents of the National Institute of Migration (INM) of hitting him and stealing his equipment.
Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) will investigate military agression against three journalists who covered a police operation in Nuevo Laredo, in the state of Tamaulipas, reported El Universal.
The "bloodshed" continues, said Reporters Without Borders (RSF) after the killing in Mexico of Marco Aurelio Martínez Tijerina, in the state of Nuevo León, and Guillermo Alcaraz Trejo, of Chihuahua, in the northern part of the country. Their deaths bring the number of media workers killed in Mexico this year to at least 10, according to RSF.
The media suffering most from the killings of at least eight journalists this year in Mexico are those in the interior of the country who are essentially defenseless against the violence, reported the Inter Press Service (IPS).
Hugo Olivera Cartas was killed Tuesday morning after being shot three times. The body was found in a pickup truck on a road between the cities of Tepalcatepec and Aguililla in the western state of Michoacán, reports the news agency Quadratín, where the journalist worked. (See this Associated Press article in English.)
The attorney general’s office decided to restructure the Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Journalists, which will now focus specifically on crimes against media workers who are attacked for their profession, El Universal and EFE report.
In a letter to the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Mexican President Felipe Calderón acknowledges a letter CPJ sent him a month ago about the increase in the number of cases of attacks and harassment by security forces against the press. The president said that the complaint was sent to the Attorney General's office, which will offer a response.