Reporter Pablo Ruelas Barraza was found shot to death in Huatabampo (Sonora state, northwest Mexico) on June 13, apparently executed by two gunmen who tried first to abduct him. Ruelas, 38, worked for regional dailies Diario del Yaqui in Huatabampo and El Regional de Sonora in Hermosillo. The past month has been grim for the country’s journalists.
Local media said Ruelas Barraza, a general reporter, had received death threats. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) called on investigators to consider that he might have been killed because of his work and warned that focusing on his previous brushes with the law must not be allowed to interfere with this. The organisation said the killing again raised the issue of when the federal government was going to apply the new agreement on protecting journalists signed last November.
A total of 74 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 2000 and 13 others have disappeared. The government’s war against drug-traffickers has cost about 40,000 lives since December 2006.
