(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 17 January 2002 IAPA press release: IAPA condemns threats against Mexican journalist Miami (17 January 2002) – Today, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) condemned the fact that journalist Jesús Blancornelas has received death threats and urged the Mexican government to investigate the incident and punish those responsible. The […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 17 January 2002 IAPA press release:
IAPA condemns threats against Mexican journalist
Miami (17 January 2002) – Today, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) condemned the fact that journalist Jesús Blancornelas has received death threats and urged the Mexican government to investigate the incident and punish those responsible. The organisation also called for an end to the culture of impunity that those who resort to violence are trying to impose.
Blancornelas, publisher of the weekly Zeta, is one of the country’s best known journalists. He has investigated and published a number of reports on drug trafficking in Mexico, particularly in Tijuana, a town bordering on the United States, where the drug cartel run by the Arellano Félix brothers operates.
Blancornelas stated that on 10 January he received death threats from an unknown source via e-mail. During an attack on the journalist on 27 November 1997, his bodyguard and one of the assailants, a gunman working for the Arellano Félix brothers’ drug cartel, were killed.
As IAPA President Robert J. Cox, assistant editor of the Charleston, South Carolina newspaper The Post and Courier, stated, IAPA “condemns the death threats against Blancornelas and urges the Mexican government to launch an investigation and punish those responsible, thereby preventing those who use violence from continuing to impose a culture of impunity.”
Cox added that, although the hemispheric organisation welcomes the measures adopted by the authorities to protect and provide security for the journalist, “we hope that action will be taken towards identifying and bringing to justice those responsible for creating a climate of terror that restricts freedom of expression and press freedom.”
Héctor Félix Miranda, one of Blancornelas’ closest collaborators and Zeta’s co-editor, was killed on 20 April 1988. The unresolved crime is being investigated by the IAPA under its Unpunished Crimes Against Journalists project.
Cox noted that “while the authorities are investigating and working towards resolving cases of attacks and crimes against journalists, they can at the same time work towards putting an end to acts intended to frighten the press. We cannot allow the press to be silenced.”
Finally, the IAPA president referred to Principle Four of the Declaration of Chapultepec, which stipulates that “freedom of expression and of the press are severely limited by murder, terrorism, kidnapping, intimidation, the unjust imprisonment of journalists, the destruction of facilities, violence of any kind and impunity for perpetrators. Such acts must be investigated promptly and punished harshly.”
