(CEPET/IFEX) – Ricardo García Jiménez, a journalist from Oaxaca State in southern Mexico, reported that he has received constant threats and intimidation because of his work as a journalist and has decided to file a report about these incidents with the Attorney General’s Office (Procuraduría General de la República, PGR) and the Cyberspace Police. The […]
(CEPET/IFEX) – Ricardo García Jiménez, a journalist from Oaxaca State in southern Mexico, reported that he has received constant threats and intimidation because of his work as a journalist and has decided to file a report about these incidents with the Attorney General’s Office (Procuraduría General de la República, PGR) and the Cyberspace Police.
The first threat was issued on 12 February 2007, when the journalist received an e-mail which warned him not to write about pederasty or the deaths of reporters. On 13 June and 27 July 2007 he received similar threats.
A year later on 2 August 2008 around 7:45 p.m. (local time), he was stopped by an unidentified individual, riding a motorcycle without licence plates, while he was heading home in Huajuapan de León. The individual warned him to stop writing and then quickly fled, disappearing into the flow of traffic, said García Jiménez.
On 22 February 2009, García Jiménez received another e-mail with threats. The text ended with: “This is the first warning. We are the Z”.
On 7 April, the journalist noticed that it seemed his computer had been hacked into and that the names of some of his files had been changed. Because of these incidents, on 13 April García Jiménez decided to file a report with the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Journalists (Fiscalía Especial para la Atención de Delitos Cometidos contra Periodistas) and the Cyberspace Police.