Posts Tagged ‘Mexico’
May 21st, 2012
The body of a murdered
Mexican crime reporter was
found at a roadside on Friday. Marco Antonio Avila Garcia of “Diario Sonora de la Tarde” and “El Regional” newspapers was kidnapped on Thursday while waiting at a car-wash. His tortured body was discovered in a black plastic bag the following day, in the northern state of Sonora, almost 70 miles away from where he was kidnapped. Police found a message signed by a cartel with the body, but refused to reveal its contents. Garcia regularly reported on organised crime in Ciudad Obregon.
March 30th, 2012
National Mexican television network Televisa, based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, suffered a
bomb attack on 25 March. No one was injured in the blast, which occurred in the wake of two other attacks in the same part of northern Mexico. On 19 March a car bomb explosion took place at the offices of the daily Expreso in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state. Expreso subsequently removed a statement on the attack from its website. The Durango home of Víctor Montenegro, editor of the weekly El Contralor, also faced a shooting attack during the night of 24 March. Televisa was
hit by similar blasts in August 2010, though no injuries were caused.
January 10th, 2012
A
Mexican journalist has
been murdered by an armed gang during a high-speed car chase. Raúl Régulo Garza Quirino, from local weekly newspaper La Última Palabra, in Nuevo León, was killed as he tried to escape the bullets of an armed gang who were firing at him from two pursuing vehicles. Quirino’s body was
discovered in front of a mechanic shop, owned by a relative. Quirino is the first journalist to be killed in Mexico in 2012. In 2011, the country was named the world’s
most dangerous country to practice journalism, by the International Press Institute (IPI).
December 2nd, 2011
Slander and libel have
been decriminalised by the
Mexican Senate. The senate approved the repeal of Articles 1 and 31 of the Crimes Act, with a
unanimous decision. Mexico have joined
El Salvador as the second Latin American country to decriminalise honour crimes. The decision follows the end of a seven-year defamation trial where the newspaper La Jornada accused magazine Letras Libres of
damaging its reputation. The court determined that freedom of expression supersedes the right to honour.
November 2nd, 2011
MURDERED 2 NOVEMBER 2005
Journalist, “El Tiempo de Durango” – Durango, Mexico
Join us in demanding justice for crime reporter José Bladimir Antuna Garcían, 39, who was found murdered on 2 November 2009 after he was ambushed by five armed men in the Mexican city of Durango on his way to work. Attached to his body was a note reading, “This happened to me for giving information to the military and for writing too much.” Antuna had been investigating corruption and police crime and had been receiving threatening calls, some from the powerful drug cartel Los Zetas. He reported the threats to the state attorney general’s office; they were never followed up.
Take action and send a letter to the authorities demanding an immediate and open investigation into this case here
International Day to End Impunity is on 23 November. Until that date, we will reveal a story each day of a journalist, writer or free expression advocate who was killed in the line of duty.
September 27th, 2011
Mexican reporter Manuel Gabriel Fonseca Hernández, who covers crime for El Mañanero de Acayucan, a newspaper in the south of Veracruz state, has been
reported missing since 19 September. His family says that, on day he disappeared, he had gone out to conduct interviews for a story he was writing for his main newspaper.
September 22nd, 2011
Two people jailed for making “alarmist” posts on Twitter were
freed yesterday after four weeks in prison in
Mexico. Maria de Jesus Bravo, a local journalist, and maths teacher Gilberto Martinez Vera, had the charges of terrorism and sabotage against them dropped, and they walked free from jail to cheering supporters. The pair sent out Twitter messages regarding an
unconfirmed drug attack on a primary school last month, and were accused of terrifying frantic parents. The charges, which can carry prison sentences of up to 30 years imprisonment, were dropped following outrage from human rights activists and free speech advocates.
September 2nd, 2011
The bodies of Marcela Yarce, the founder of a political magazine, and Rocio González, a freelance journalist,
have been discovered by joggers in El Mirador park in Iztapalapa,
Mexico City. The women’s necks showed strangulation marks and their hands were tied behind their backs, said a spokesman for Mexico City police. Authorities gave no motive for the killings. Yarce founded Contralinea magazine, and González was a freelancer and former reporter for the Televisa television network.
