Mexico

Deaths tied to drug violence and grave human rights violations have increased significantly since President Felipe Calderón deployed the military in 2007 to combat Mexico's drug cartels, says Human Rights Watch. An estimated 35,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence during the Calderón administration, including more than 15,000 in 2010. Mexico's National Human Rights Commission has...

Armed individuals intercepted Oswald Alonso Navarro, a correspondent for the international news agency the Associated Press (AP), and Marco Antonio Vallejo Estrada, a publicist for the Radio Fórmula radio station, on February 25 as they were driving on a street in Cuernavaca, in the central Mexican state of Morelos, according to ARTICLE 19 and Centro Nacional de Comunicación Social (CENCOS). The...

ARTICLE 19 has welcomed the decriminalisation of defamation in Mexico's Puebla state, following the adoption of reforms to the local Criminal Code. At the same time, the recent reform could be further improved by introducing a civil defamation regulation adjusted to international standards including the presence of actual malice and ensure that those sued for defamation are able to mount a proper...

Gunmen staged separate attacks on a TV station and a radio station in Torreón, in the northern state of Coahuila on February 9, killing a young engineer, Rodolfo Ochoa, in the attack on Canal 9 (Milenio TV), which is owned by the Multimedios Laguna group. Equipment was destroyed in the attack on the radio station, Radiorama, which has been off the air ever since, according to Paris-based press...

Influential radio and TV anchor Carmen Aristegui was suddenly fired by the MVS media group on February 6, two days after referring in her weekday news programme on radio MVS and cable channel Canal 52 to claims by opposition legislators that President Felipe Calderón has an alcohol problem, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The speed with which she was...

The Mexican government should regard two grenade attacks this week on news media in northern Mexico – one against Televisa in Piedras Negras and one against a local newspaper in Monterrey – as a serious warning and should speed implementation of a federal-level convention on the protection of journalists that was signed in November, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF)...

The president of the government-run National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), Raúl Plascencia, said killings, disappearances, and kidnappings of media workers and activists will be a priority for the agency in 2011, Milenio reports, according to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. In order to face the growing number of crimes against journalists, Plascencia said the CNDH will...

Four journalists are still missing in the southwestern state of Michoacán, one of the epicentres of the federal offensive against the drug cartels that President Felipe Calderón launched on taking office in December 2006, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). José Antonio García Apac, the editor of the local weekly Ecos de la Cuenca, has been missing the...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned Wednesday's shooting attack against Mexican newspaper El Sur in the port city of Acapulco, Guerrero state. Unidentified armed men fired at the paper and then stormed into the newsroom and threatened to set it on fire, according to local news reports and CPJ interviews. Around 10:30 p.m., gunmen aboard two trucks fired at the paper's premises...

Héctor Camero, a representative of Radio Tierra y Libertad, a community radio station based in a poor neighbourhood of Monterrey (in the northeastern state of Nuevo León), was told on November 3 that he has been sentenced to two years in prison and a fine of 15,000 pesos (900 euros) on a charge of “using, developing and exploiting radio frequencies without a licence.” The sentence deals another...