(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 28 September 2005 IAPA press release: IAPA PROTESTS IMPUNITY IN MEXICAN JOURNALIST MURDER It urges newspaper readers to sign a letter of support at http://www.impunidad.com MIAMI, Florida (September 28) – In an advertisement that is being published beginning today in 310 newspapers throughout the Americas the Inter American Press […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 28 September 2005 IAPA press release:
IAPA PROTESTS IMPUNITY IN MEXICAN JOURNALIST MURDER
It urges newspaper readers to sign a letter of support at http://www.impunidad.com
MIAMI, Florida (September 28) – In an advertisement that is being published beginning today in 310 newspapers throughout the Americas the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) drew attention to the impunity that continues to surround the murder on July 15, 1997, of Mexican journalist Benjamín Flores.
With the ad the IAPA launches an international public awareness campaign aimed at bringing to justice those guilty of crimes against journalists. In a document signed on August 30 by the IAPA and 40 editors and publishers of newspapers in the northern Mexico border region, titled the Declaration of Hermosillo, Mexico’s President Vicente Fox was urged to have such crimes be dealt with under federal, rather than state or local, jurisdiction, that they not be subject to any statute of limitation and that punishment of the guilty be stiffened.
Fox declared that he shared this view and pledged to act to establish special prosecutors’ offices to investigate crimes against journalists.
Flores, 29, was editor of La Prensa newspaper in San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora state, Mexico. He was arriving at his office when he was gunned down and shot in the head three times. Flores frequently exposed alleged corruption and links between police officers and politicians with drug traffickers. The examining magistrate presiding over the case issued arrest warrants for four suspects, but no one has been detained and the murder continues to go unpunished.
In the ad, which is being published in newspapers around the hemisphere as of today, the IAPA deplores the fact that those guilty of Flores’s murder are still free and invites the international community to go to the Web site http://www.impunidad.com and sign a letter to be sent to President Fox, asking for him to act to ensure that the guilty are brought to justice.
In the last two and a half years, the IAPA has published a total of 31 ads on impunity and sent letters to the respective presidents with the support of some 20,000 signatures of newspaper readers throughout the Americas.