The IAPA has protested against the government's foot-dragging and silence concerning the investigation into the murder of journalist Víctor Manuel Oropeza.
(IAPA/IFEX) – MIAMI, Florida (July 28, 2009) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) in an announcement published today in more than 400 newspapers throughout the Americas protested Mexican government foot-dragging and silence concerning investigations into the murder of journalist and physician Víctor Manuel Oropeza, committed on July 3, 1991 in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua state.
Ten years ago, at the IAPA’s insistence, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued a series of recommendations to the government of Mexico on the need to conduct an effective investigation to determine the identity of those responsible for Oropeza’s death and have them brought to justice.
At the same time the IAPA held a number of meetings with officials in the Chihuahua State Attorney General’s Office and the Mexican Foreign Ministry in an attempt to move along the inquiries into the crime.
But all has come to nothing. The Mexican authorities have delayed the investigation and remained silent. The murder continues to go unpunished.
The IAPA, with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, has kept up a hemisphere-wide campaign aimed at raising public awareness of the need to solve the still-unpunished murders of journalists. In the last 22 years a total of 354 journalists have been slain in the Americas. Through ads published in newspapers around the hemisphere readers are invited to go to the Web site http://www.impunidad.com and join the organization’s campaign titled “Let’s Put an End to Impunity.”
