20 Sep 12 | Mexico
The fate of a masked blogger has set Mexican social networking sites ablaze over the last couple of weeks, leaving behind a trail of mystery and confusion. A young anti-establishment blogger working under the name el5anto disappeared on 8 September, according to his Twitter account and reports from his blog colleagues. His blog and Twitter activities have all suspended since he vanished.
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27 Apr 12 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
On 24 April, Chinese petitioner Hu Lianyou was sentenced to two years in prison for defamation after comments made about a local police chief online, according to Chinese state media. Hu allegedly wrote posts on popular websites accusing two officers, including police chief Zheng Hang, of corruption and beating him during an interrogation. The petitioner requested that the trial take place in a more neutral court, rather than in his native Dong’an county, where he has a history of criticising authorities. His request was denied, according to the Chinese Media Project.
15 Mar 12 | Index Index, minipost
Burma’s mining ministry have said they will file a lawsuit against a news journal following allegations of corruption. An article in weekly publication The Voice said that the Auditor-General’s Office had discovered fraud in the mining, information, agriculture and industry ministries. It is believed that the article was published without approval from the country’s censors. The mining ministry’s director general Win Htein denied the accusations, and said the report had harmed the ministry’s dignity.
07 Mar 12 | Mexico
The author and publisher of a bestselling book on Mexican drug trafficking were sued in Mexico City this week for defamation. Anabel Hernandez, and the publisher Random House Mondadori were sued following remarks contained in Los Señores del Narco, The Lords of Drug Trafficking, a book that takes to task Mexican politicians and businessmen and traces a system of corruption and collusion back to the 1970s.
Former Attorney General Jorge Carpizo said the book damaged his reputation by insinuating he kept $400 thousand dollars of the reward money earmarked for the 1993 capture of drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera. Carpizo believes Hernandez attacked him without valid sources, and without presenting any official evidence of her charges. “Having access to various public documents and books, the journalist made a number of affirmations that lack truth and context”, said the lawsuit, which was filed on the heels of an announcement by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), that Anabel Hernandez had won their Golden Pen for Freedom award for 2012.
Hernandez, a reporter for online magazine Reporte Indigo, said in an interview that Carpizo’s charges were baseless. “I adhere to the principles of the Constitution and Mexico’s Press Law,” she said, arguing that the lawsuit from Carpizo’s is in retaliation for details included in the book which mentioned the names of powerful Mexicans. “In a book of 600 pages, I mention Carpizo three times,” she explained. Carpizo was one of five attorney generals who served under former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
The book was published in Spanish in December 2010 and has remained on the bestseller list in Mexico, having also sold a record number of copies in the United States. The book makes several assertions that have caused Hernandez trouble. In it she claims that the governments of Vicente Fox, who served in office from 2000 to 2006, and Felipe Calderon, who will leave office in December this year, made a pact to protect the Sinaloa Cartel, led by El Chapo Guzman, the same kingpin who was captured by Carpizo in 1993. Guzman escaped from a high security prison in 2001, a few months after Fox took office. According to the book, Calderon’s war on drugs is only against enemies of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Hernandez has lived with fulltime bodyguards since publishing the book. “I knew I was touching a lot of important and powerful people, so I accept my fate,” she said. According to the journalist, the lawsuit against her is just one of several that have been lodged against Mexican journalists to silence them. “This is the latest technique to attack freedom of the press,” she insisted. “They keep us going from tribunal to tribunal, and stop us from doing our work.” Last year Hernandez publicly accused Secretary of Public Security, Genaro Garcia Luna, who is accused of protecting drug traffickers in the book, of planning to assassinate her.
Hernandez took 5 years to write the book. She will receive the WAN´s Golden Pen of Freedom award in September 2012 in Ukraine. She is the first Latin American reporter to receive the award since 1990, when the late Luis Gabriel Cano won the award. Cano was brother of Guillermo Cano, who was killed by Colombin drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.
