(CPJ/IFEX) – Please find attached a letter from Jesús Barraza, editor of the weekly Pulso in San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora State, Mexico. **Updates IFEX alerts of 15 June, 10 June, 14 May and 13 May 1999** As mentioned in CPJ’s May 13 and June 14 letters to President Ernesto Zedillo, Barraza’s life has recently […]
(CPJ/IFEX) – Please find attached a letter from Jesús Barraza, editor of the
weekly Pulso in San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora State, Mexico.
**Updates IFEX alerts of 15 June, 10 June, 14 May and 13 May 1999**
As mentioned in CPJ’s May 13 and June 14 letters to President Ernesto
Zedillo, Barraza’s life has recently been threatened because of his
reporting on the local narcotics trade. On May 4, an unidentified individual
told Barraza that reputed drug trafficker Albino Quintero Meraz was
disturbed by two recent Pulso articles alleging links between him and a
former state governor. On June 5, a bodyguard provided to Barraza by the
municipal police was beaten up by federal police officers who were
apparently unhappy about an article he had published linking the federal
police to local drug traffickers. As a result, the municipal police have
withdrawn Barraza’s protection.
Now Barraza informs us that the Sonora State Attorney General’s office has
refused to provide him with protection, claiming that they lack the
resources. If this is so, Barraza is in peril: the July 15, 1997 murder of
his press colleague Benjamín Flores González, for which drug traffickers are
widely believed to be responsible, shows how seriously death threats against
journalists who cover the drug trade need to be taken in San Luis Río
Colorado. Please urge the Mexican authorities to provide Barraza, his
family, and his
colleagues with the protection they so desperately need.
Marylene Smeets
Americas Program Coordinator
Committee to Protect Journalists
—————–
Urgent letter: Please help
San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora state, Mexico
Thursday, July 8, 1999
Dear colleagues and friends,
I turn to you once more to request your intervention or at least inform you
of the latest events regarding the difficult situation we at the weekly
newsmagazine PULSO, of which I am editor, are going through.
Yesterday we received a disquieting and upsetting answer to the actions of
the National Commission for Human Rights (known for its Spanish initials
CNDH), personally undertaken by Alejandro Evaristo, to ask the State
Attorney General’s office to provide me with police protection due to
threats made against me and the general climate of intimidation that we have
been subjected to.
Evaristo told me by telephone from Mexico City that the authorities told him
they did not have the staff or financial resources to provide protection. I
am extremely concerned by this answer, for it seems to indicate that in this
state journalists who report on corruption and drug trafficking are at the
mercy of gunmen and may be killed at any time.
The local authorities’ apparent inability to guarantee freedom of the press
seems to grant drug traffickers’ henchmen the “authority” to come into our
offices and kill us, as they killed our previous editor Benjamin Flores
González on July 15, 1997, whose murderers, by the way, are still at large.
I suspect the authorities’ decision is more an indicator of their
unwillingness and lack of interest in guaranteeing the security of
journalists than their actual lack of resources.
Due to this situation I have two options:
One: To leave the state of Sonora as soon as possible to distance myself
from those who want to kill me.
Two: To stay and wait until those who have threatened me make good on their
threats and kill me.
I cannot leave because of the difficult financial situation we are going
through. We are a group of journalists who left the daily La Prensa in March
1998 due to differences with the new owner of that paper and managed to
start PULSO after countless sacrifices and hardships. To leave would be a
heavy burden and my options therefore actually shrink to one, the one I
least prefer.
I have received many death threats and have been attacked once due to
several articles I have published.
The most recent death threat came in May, from an envoy who said he was sent
by a drug trafficker called Albino Quintero Meraz, whose illegal activities
we reported in Pulso. On June 5, Federal Judicial Police agents attacked the
bodyguard who had been assigned to me, beating him and taking away his gun,
and then coming into our offices threatening to take me away due to articles
we had published on links between local drug traffickers and state
officials.
As if all this were not enough, in the past few days I have received various
death threats telling me to stop publishing articles on illegal activities
of drug traffickers and police.
Due to all this, I believe my life and the lives of my relatives and my
reporters are at serious risk and so I again turn to you. Groups such as the
Committee to Protect Journalists, the Mexican Journalists Society, the
Mexican Network for the Protection of Journalists, the Mexican Academy of
Human Rights, the National Commission for Human Rights and the Miami Society
of Professional Journalists have sent letters to the Mexican government
asking it to guarantee our safety.
Due to the local authorities’ inability to protect me, the CNDH has
reportedly said it would continue to press the case before other branches of
government and would get back to me.
I am not yet exasperated by the pressure I am going through, but I feel
besieged psychologically. I ask for your help in making this situation
public also because I realize the weight your intervention has in these
cases. I hope also it is not too much to ask to forward this information to
other journalists and groups dedicated to protecting human rights and press
freedoms.
Please help us.
Sincerely,
Jesus Barraza Zavala
Editor
Our phone and fax is (653) 6-11-08
MAIL ADDRESS: Av. Tamaulipas y calle 13, No. 1298
San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, Mexico.
