(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 30 November 2006 IAPA press release: IAPA CALLS FOR ACTION IN MEXICO MURDER MIAMI, Florida (November 30, 2006) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today called on newspaper readers throughout the Americas to sign a public letter to Mexico’s President requesting his collaboration to solve the February 22, […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 30 November 2006 IAPA press release:
IAPA CALLS FOR ACTION IN MEXICO MURDER
MIAMI, Florida (November 30, 2006) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today called on newspaper readers throughout the Americas to sign a public letter to Mexico’s President requesting his collaboration to solve the February 22, 1988 murder of journalist Manuel Burgueño Orduño.
Burgueño, who worked as a columnist for the Mazatlán, Sinaloa state, newspaper El Sol del Pacífico, frequently denounced corruption and drug trafficking. Unidentified armed and masked men burst into his home and shot him. The State Attorney’s Office accused contract killers Rigoberto and Humberto Rodríguez Bañulos of having carried out the murder and named seven others as accomplices. Rigoberto Rodríguez escaped from jail and his brother is being held in custody for other alleged offenses, without having been formally charged in the journalist’s murder, which remains unsolved.
The IAPA is waging an international campaign dubbed “Let’s Put and End to Impunity” so that the 308 murders of journalists committed in the last 19 years in the Western Hemisphere not continue to go unpunished. A total of 380 newspapers, radio and television stations throughout the Americas are carrying interactive ads inviting the general public to go to the Web site http://www.impunidad.com to sign a letter to the president of the country where each crime was committed.
The IAPA hemisphere-wide anti-impunity campaign, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also includes investigative reporting programs, training for journalists working in hostile environments, and the monitoring of the state of press freedom in the Americas.
