Mexico

The Mexican special federal prosecutor for dealing with attacks on the media, Octavio Alberto Orellana Wiarco, has ruled out that two young women community journalists in Oaxaca State were killed because of their work. His public statement that the radio journalists of the Triqui indigenous community were shot in an attack aimed at the driver of their vehicle showed yet again the special...

A veteran crime reporter José Armando Rodríguez’s murder has been instrumental in the launch of a nationwide campaign to protect journalists in Mexico. In November 2008, Rodríguez was shot dead at his home in Ciudad Juárez on the Texas border. With the government doing little to protect journalists, ARTICLE 19 and National Centre for Social Communication (CENCOS) have launched their own campaign

A newspaper reporter has been imprisoned for two months after having been detained by military personnel when he was on his way to cover a confrontation between opposing gangs of suspected drug traffickers in Arcelia, Guerrero, southern Mexico. According to national and Guerrero-based media outlets, on September 6 a group of approximately 30 men from Mexico State arrived in Guerrero and entered...

The recent spurt in attacks against journalists in Mexico has press freedom groups extremely worried. Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on US border authorities to make the necessary humanitarian provisions for journalists who are being forced to flee into exile. In particular, it requested the immediate release of Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto—held in the Texan...

Miguel Angel Villa Gómez Valle, editor of Noticias de Michoacán, a daily newspaper based in Lázaro Cárdenas, in the southwestern Mexican state of Michoacán was abducted and killed last week, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Villa Gómez’s bullet-riddled body was found October 10 morning in a refuse dump, less than 12 hours after he went missing. “The list of kidnappings and execution...

The last three years have been incredibly dangerous for media working in Mexico. An international coalition of press freedom organisations' report "Press Freedom: Shadow of Impunity and Violence" highlights the range of risks that they face with attacks against journalists continuing to increase at alarming rates. "Mexico has been one of the most dangerous countries for journalists in recent years

With new allegations of the beating of a journalist by soldiers, the Mexican military must develop procedures to ensure that the press can cover its operations, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has insisted. Mexican reporter Jorge Inzunza Bustillos was harassed and beaten by members of the Mexican army while covering a shooting in the western city of Culiacán on Monday...

During the weekend of July 26-27, unidentified individuals broke into the offices of CIMAC (Comunicación e Información de la Mujer), a Mexico City-based non-govermental organisation that reports on women's issues through the "Cimacnoticias" news agency. The assailants stole some of the organisation's equipment and destroyed a number of documents. CIMAC editor Carolina Velázquez explained in an...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed shock at the wave of violence in the northern state of Chihuahua that has cost the life of Candelario Pérez Pérez, a 32-year-old journalist who worked as an editor on his father's crime magazine, Sucesos. Pérez was gunned down in the border town of Ciudad Juárez on June 23. The motive for the murder is not yet known. "So far there is no evidence of a...

Rafael Velasco Salas, deputy director of the bimonthly publication Zona Norte and correspondent in Chiapas for the Oaxaca-based newspaper Noticias, Voz e Imagen, was assaulted and threatened with murder by Humberto Cernuda Hernández, brother of Josefa Cernuda - the president of the Family Services Unit (Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, DIF) of the city of Pichucalco in the state of Chiapas...