Posts Tagged ‘Mexico’
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.
July 27th, 2011
The decapitated body of Yolanda Ordaz, a reporter for regional paper
Notiver, has been
found in the Mexican city of Veracruz two days after she went missing. Ordaz had reportedly been investigating the 20th June murder of her colleague, columnist Miguel Angel López Velasco, his wife, and son, a photographer with the newspaper. Ordaz was also said to have received death threats in connection to her work. Local authorities, meanwhile
have said there are indications her death is related to organised crime, rather than her work as a journalist.
According to
reports, a note found with the body seems to connect Ordaz’s murder to the López killing. The note read: ”Friends also betray. Sincerely, Carranza.” This may tie the murder to the chief suspect in the López case, identified as former traffic police officer Juan Carlos Carranza.
July 1st, 2011
Mexican journalist
Lydia Cacho told Mexican authorities on Thursday (30 June) that she has received anonymous death threats via phone and e-mail for revealing the names of sex traffickers. Authorities claim they have leads on the source of the threats. Cacho is one of
many journalists who have been intimidated or even killed by crime rings for their reporting in Mexico.
June 13th, 2011
There has been no news on the whereabouts of
Marco Antonio López Ortiz, the news editor of Novedades Acapulco, a daily based in Acapulco, Mexico. He was kidnapped 7 June by a group of men. Ortiz oversaw the paper’s crime reports, but
according to his supervisor, had kept stories short and cautious in order not to cross organised crime leaders who routinely target and intimidate Mexican journalists.
June 6th, 2011
The body of missing
Mexican journalist,
Noel Lopez Olguin, was found in Veracruz on 1 June. Lopez, a columnist for a small local newspapers, was kidnapped from his home by two gunmen in
March. Throughout his career Lopez was critical of local corruption and newspapers are now distancing themselves from his work for fear of reprisal attacks.
March 30th, 2011
Two journalists, José Luis Cerda Meléndez and Luis Emanuel Ruíz Carrillo, have been
murdered in the northern state of Nuevo León. Cerda was a television host on national channel Televisa, which has been subjected to several armed
attacks. Ruíz was a reporter for a daily newspaper in Coahuila. Ruíz was visiting the area to interview Cerda. They were both
forced into a car outside the Televisa station, along with Juan Roberto Gómez, Ruíz’s cousin . The bodies of Ruíz and Cerda were
discovered the next day by the freeway, accompanied by a note which read: “Stop co-operating with Los Zetas. Signed DCG. Greetings architect No. 1”. Two criminals have now allegedly
stolen Cerda’s body. The police have
declined to intervene.
March 29th, 2011
Reporter Noel Lopez Olguin has gone
missing in Veracruz state. The Head of the Veracruz State Commission for the Defence of Journalists claims that no one has heard from him since 8 May. He travelled to the town of Soteapan in response to a telephone call. His car was found on the road to Soteapan, but his whereabouts remain unknown.
Veracruz is often used as a transit point for drug cartels trafficking drugs to the USA. Paramilitary group
Los Zetas is very active in the region, and kidnappings occur frequently.
