MEXICO CITY (apro).- Mexico maintains the classification of “one of the most dangerous and lethal countries for the press in the region and the world,” maintains the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), highlighting that a third Of the homicides against journalists that occurred last year on the continent, occurred in our country.
According to the annual report of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression (RELE) of the IACHR, in 2023, 21 homicides of journalists were recorded “for reasons that could be linked to their work” in the American continent, of which seven occurred in Mexico. The other countries in which communicators were victimized were Colombia, the United States, Guatemala, Haiti and Paraguay.
Added to the homicides were “reports of kidnappings, threats, physical and verbal attacks, acts of intimidation and judicial harassment, stigmatizing accusations against the press by high authorities, as well as attacks and smear campaigns against journalists and media outlets in the digital sphere.”
The RELE returned to data from the organization Article 19, which in the first half of 2023 documented 272 attacks, “intimidation and harassment being the most common form of violence that journalists face in Mexico.”
The IACHR office on freedom of expression recalled that, in a public hearing held during the 186th regular period of sessions, civil society organizations indicated that “agents of the State and members of organized crime would be the main aggressors of the press,” situation that generates “hostility, insecurity and discredit has caused a general fear of the press to report on issues of drug trafficking, public security, corruption or organized crime.”
According to the IACHR, the acts of violence against journalists “are inserted in a context of growing stigmatization, disqualification and discredit by political actors and public officials at different levels of the State against the press.”
Growing stigmatization
In that sense, he considered worrying “the growing stigmatization of the press promoted by the Executive Branch through the ‘Who is who in the lies of the week’ section, implemented since June 2021 with the alleged purpose of ‘analyzing, verifying and clarify imprecise news of general interest to the population.”
According to a report by Articles 19, in the first half of 2023 of the 65 direct attacks against the press, 42 came from that section, and the press would have been described negatively on at least 114 occasions, with expressions of “ conservative”, “biased”, “adversarial”, “sell-out”, “corrupt”.
The RELE included in its report expressions by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador against the Animal Político journalist, Nayeli Roldán, on March 10 of last year, to whom he denied answering a question and accused her of being part of a “press biased, sold, rented, at the service of the corrupt.”
Likewise, on July 19 he warned that there was a “dirty war” by the media against his government and on July 26 he used the presidential platform to attack opinion leaders.
The RELE considered the activation of judicial proceedings against journalists and communicators to be worrying, including the complaint for moral damage filed by the brother of President Pío López Obrador, against the journalist Carlos Loret de Mola, as well as the lawsuit for moral damage that presented Pedro Salmerón, director of the General Agrarian Archive against the media Reforma, El Universal and Aristegui Noticas, as well as analysts for giving “voice and support” to those who accused him of sexual harassment.
The report points out the beginning of a judicial process in the prosecutor’s offices of Guanajuato and Nuevo León, against the journalist Arnoldo Cuéllar Ornelas, director of the Laboratory of Journalism and Public Opinion (PopLab), whom the Director of Intelligence of Nuevo León, Paul Cortez Suárez, accused of threats.
The IACHR took note of the new cases of espionage of human rights defenders through the Pegasus spy software, in which “a secret military intelligence structure by the Army” would be involved, with the victims being the president of the Human Rights Committee of Nuevo Laredo, Raymundo Ramos; the director of the Human Rights Center Agustín Prodh and the person responsible for the international area of the same organization, Santiago Aguirre Espinosa and María Luis Aguilar Rodríguez, as well as the then undersecretary of Human Rights of the Ministry of the Interior, Alejandro Encinas, and Camilo Vicente Ovalle , member of the Commission for Access to the Truth, Historical Clarification and the Promotion of Justice for human rights violations committed during the so-called “dirty war.”
Journalists murdered in 2023
The RELE recounted the murders that occurred in 2023, of Abisaí Pérez Romero, on February 13, in Tula Hidalgo; by José Ramiro Araujo, on February 21 in Ensenada, Baja California; by Gerardo Torres Rentería, on May 11 in Acapulco, Guerrero; from Marco Aurelio Ramírez Hernández, on May 23, in Tehuacán, Puebla; by Luis Martín Sánchez Íñiguez, in Tepic, Nayarit, on July 8, 2023; by Nelson Matus Peña, on July 15 in Acapulco, Guerrero; of Jesús Gutiérrez Vergara, on September 25 in San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, as well as the murder of Ismael Villagómez on November 16 in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.
He warns that he received information about progress in clarifying the cases of the homicides of José Moisés Sánchez Cerezo and María Elena Ferral Hernández, both cases that occurred in Veracruz; as well as in the cases of Javier Váldez, from Sinaloa, and Miroslava Breach Valducena, from Chihuahua.
The RELE also recorded the attacks against Por Esto reporter Rubén Darío Cruz Hernández, on January 26 of last year, in Cancún, Quintana Roo: Pedro Alonso Benítez, in San Martín Texmelucan, Puebla, on May 28; Jorge Ugalde Hernández, director of the Quintanarroense Citizen Discontent portal; as well as the case of the fire of the vehicle of the director of the Noticias en la Web portal, Fernando Rodríguez, on April 3 in Acuña, Coahuila.
RELE also reported on the attack suffered by journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva on December 15, 2022, and the progress in the investigation presented in March by the then head of Government, Claudia Sheinbaum.
The IACHR’s office on freedom of expression registered as “serious acts of intimidation” the kidnappings of the son of photojournalist Froylán Méndez Ferrer, in December 2022 in Oaxaca; from journalists Jimmy Palomo Canché and Soraida Aguilar Hernández, in Quintana Roo, on March 18, 2023; from Ricardo Villanueva Ake, in Veracruz. On April 3, 2023.
Likewise, the disappearance of journalist Juan Carlos Hinojosa, editor of La de 8 News, which occurred on July 6, in Factoría Nanchital, Veracruz, is reported, a case in which the Association of Journalists of Coatzacoalcos reported “the lack of clarity in the strategy search to locate the missing photojournalist generates a feeling of improvisation and anxiety.”
Among the cases of abuses committed against journalists, the RELE recorded the illegitimate arrests of journalists Jonathan Lora Ramírez and Osiris Maldonado De la Paz, on July 7 and 3, 2023, respectively, in Tepic, Nayarit, who were tried to involved with the murder of Luis Martín Sánchez Íñiguez. The journalists were released on July 9, while that year, in Nayarit, six journalists reported death threats.
Likewise, the special office of the IACHR received information that “attacks, assaults and intimidation against journalists and their families by armed groups” continued. Among these cases were that of Jesús Medina, president of the organization Displaced Journalists of Mexico and the journalist Carlos Jiménez.
The RELE also recorded cases of “aggressions, abuse of power and arbitrary and illegal detentions perpetrated by authorities and police agents”, one of which occurred on January 24, 2023, against Leslie Pérez, a photojournalist for El Heraldo, who was asked by Guadalupe Victoria police officers for the photographic record and to hand over his cell phone, while on May 12, Andrea Sambuccetti, a Univision journalist, was detained along with her video equipment for an alleged traffic violation. in Poza Rica, and threatened with being reported to the National Migration Institute (INM).
Other journalists detained during their journalistic work on April 13 were Gabriel Aguilar Ay, general director of Esquema Cozumel, and Silvia Peraza Azueta, director of Code Rojo, when she was covering a rollover in Cozumel, Quintana Roo.
One more is that of Ángel Baltasar Galindo, a journalist from the newspaper El Sol del Bajío, who after covering a police report, was illegally detained by elements of the Secretariat of Citizen Security of the Municipality of Celaya, who allegedly beat him and caused a rib fracture and a second degree cervical sprain, in addition to being threatened if he reported the facts.
