Readers are invited to sign a letter to the president calling for the implementation of legal mechanisms to confront the increasing violence against journalists.
(IAPA/IFEX) – MIAMI, Florida, August 30, 2010 – Journalists throughout Mexico have come together to urge authorities to bring those guilty of the murder or disappearance of journalists – some 70 in the last decade – to justice.
Their street protest is in line with the position that the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has taken with the Mexican federal government that such crimes be made federal offenses, that the applicable statutes of limitations be extended, that the penalties be stiffened and there be a system of protection of journalists.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of newspaper readers in the Americas have been invited by the IAPA to add their signatures to a letter to Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón, asking him to set up legal mechanisms to enable the increasing violence against journalists and news media to be confronted and halted, once and for all putting an end to the impunity surrounding it, and calling for those who are identified and found guilty to be subjected to the full weight of the law.
