(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 6 April 2005 IAPA press release: IAPA condemns attack and disappearance of journalists in Mexico Miami (April 6, 2005) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) condemns and regrets the brutal attack of a journalist in Tamaulipas and the disappearance of another journalist in Sonora. These incidents are the […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 6 April 2005 IAPA press release:
IAPA condemns attack and disappearance of journalists in Mexico
Miami (April 6, 2005) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) condemns and regrets the brutal attack of a journalist in Tamaulipas and the disappearance of another journalist in Sonora. These incidents are the latest in a long list of violence against journalists in Mexico.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Gonzalo Marroquín, deplored both acts and stressed, “We are watching with concern how groups on the fringes of the law are setting a precedence of violence in Mexico against the press and the public. We urge the country’s top officials to investigate these acts thoroughly and promptly, as well as bring those responsible to justice.”
According to information submitted to the office of the IAPA’s vice chairman for Mexico of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, reporter Guadalupe García Escamilla, who works at a radio station in the city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, on the U.S.-Mexican border, was shot on April 5 by an unknown assailant who was waiting for her outside the station.
García Escamilla, who has been a journalist for more than 15 years, is in serious condition at a local hospital after receiving 9 gun shot wounds; two in the chest, three in the abdomen, and the rest in her arms and legs. On February 18, the reporter had complained about telephone death threats allegedly in connection with her comments on a radio program broadcast on Estéreo 91 Radio.
In a separate case, the whereabouts of reporter Alfredo Jiménez Mota, of El Imparcial newspaper, in Hermosillo, Sonora State, have been unknown since Saturday, April 2. The 26-year old journalist wrote articles on drug trafficking, a phenomenon – according to the newspaper – that has risen drastically in Sonora in the last three years.
According to reporter Shaila Rosagel, Jiménez’s colleague at El Imparcial, she was supposed to meet him later that evening after he finished an interview with a contact. He has been missing since that time.
Relatives, colleagues and friends of the journalist do not know where he is and fear that his disappearance is linked to his most recent articles, in which he revealed information on alleged plans of drug traffickers to kill local government officials, as well as possible links between local police officers and gangs.
Marroquín, editor of the Guatemalan daily Prensa Libre, stated that given the increase in attacks and murders against journalists and the public at large on the border with the United States, the IAPA, along with the office of the organization’s vice chairman in Mexico, is organizing an international conference on reporting on high-risk issues in the second half of this year.
In 2004, four journalists were killed in Mexico: Gregorio Rodríguez Hernández, in Mazatlán, Sinaloa; Francisco Arratia Saldierna, Matamoros, Tamaulipas; Francisco J. Ortiz Franco, Tijuana, Baja California, and Roberto García Mora García, Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.
