Tagged: Reporters Without Borders

January 16th, 2018 Breaking News Comments Off on Mexican columnist is stabbed 21 times in front of family, underscoring deadly risks faced by journalists

Mexican columnist is stabbed 21 times in front of family, underscoring deadly risks faced by journalists

(LOS ANGELE TIMES) — By Kate Linthicum

Carlos Dominguez was waiting at a traffic light in the northern Mexico border city of Nuevo Laredo with his son, his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren when men armed with knives flung open the car door.

Dominguez, a 77-year-old opinion columnist who had worked as a journalist for nearly four decades, was stabbed 21 times, according to Mexican authorities. They said he was attacked by at least three men who remain unidentified and at large.

The killing Saturday afternoon underscores the lethal risks faced by journalists in Mexico and the growing wave of violence gripping the nation.

Officials said they were investigating to determine whether the attack was connected to Dominguez’s work. He wrote frequently about politics, organized crime and occasionally their intersection — a perilous beat in a country that was second only to war-torn Syria in the number of journalists killed last year.

Eleven journalists were slain across Mexico in 2017, with no culprits arrested in most of those cases. Dozens of reporters have fled the country or gone into hiding.

In the Gulf Coast state of Tamaulipas, where Nuevo Laredo is located, 15 journalists have been killed since 2000, according to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission. The commission, an independent government watchdog, has sent investigators to Nuevo Laredo to look into Saturday’s attack.

The organization Reporters Without Borders said it believed Dominguez was targeted because of his controversial columns.

[READ MORE ]

June 13th, 2017 Related News Comments Off on Journalists bear invisible scars of Mexico’s drug war

Journalists bear invisible scars of Mexico’s drug war

(RAPPLER) — CHILPANCINGO, Mexico – After drug cartel thugs kidnapped him and threatened to burn him alive, Mexican journalist Jorge Martinez was so traumatized he couldn’t leave the house.

He and 6 colleagues were returning home after covering a police operation in the violent southern state of Guerrero on May 13 when some 100 masked gunmen from La Familia cartel hijacked their cars.

The narcos ended up letting them go after about 15 minutes. But it took Martinez, 44, two weeks to go outside again.

“Maybe it’s just nerves, but I feel like people are following me,” he almost whispered into the phone at the time, afraid to come out for an interview.

Two days after the kidnapping, another journalist – noted crime reporter and Agence France-Presse contributor Javier Valdez – was shot dead in broad daylight in the state of Sinaloa, scene of some of Mexico’s most brutal drug violence.

It was one of the highest-profile attacks targeting journalists in Mexico – a country where the phenomenon has become almost banal.

Journalists face harrowing risks to cover the bloody wars between Mexico’s rival cartels and the army, which have left a trail of tens of thousands of mangled bodies and hundreds of mass graves in their wake.

Reporters take their lives in their hands when they write anything that could be perceived as threatening, or even unflattering, by narcos or the corrupt government officials in bed with them.

Watchdog group Reporters Without Borders ranks Mexico as the most dangerous country in the world for journalists after Syria and Afghanistan.

Since 2006, when the government first sent the military to fight the cartels, nearly 100 journalists have been killed, more than 20 have disappeared, and more than 200 have been assaulted by drug traffickers.

[READ MORE]

March 28th, 2017 Breaking News Comments Off on Murdered Mexican journalist exposed cartel-government connection

Murdered Mexican journalist exposed cartel-government connection

(BREITBART) — by Ildefonso Ortiz

The murder of a respected journalist in the Mexican state of Chihuahua appears to be driven by her work exposing the close ties between government officials and the Juarez Cartel. One of those investigations pointed to the mother-in-law of a cartel boss trying to run for mayor, while others looked into how the former governor of that state protected certain criminal organizations.

Over the weekend, journalists held protests in Mexico City, Torreón, and Monterrey; calling for a stop to the impunity that surrounds the murder of their colleagues. The protests come after cartel gunmen shot Miroslava Breach moments after she dropped her children off at school. As Breitbart Texas reported, the gunmen left a poster board signed by a Juarez Cartel boss that said Breach had been murdered for being a “Lenguona” or loudmouth.

While Breach’s murder has received minimal attention from international media, journalists in Mexico that spoke with Breitbart Texas revealed that they are deeply concerned by the ongoing wave of violence targeting them. As Breitbart Texas has reported, Breach’s murder is the third of its kind this year. In recent years, various freedom of the press organizations such as Reporters Without Borders and Article 19 have labeled Mexico as one of the most dangerous places to work in.

Breitbart Texas spoke with representatives of the Network of Journalists in Mexico’s Northeast who expressed their concern and anger at the impunity with which journalism continues to be silenced in Mexico. The organization continues to call on the Mexican government to investigate and punish not only the triggermen, but also those who ordered the various murders.

New information published by Breach’s employer, La Jornada, revealed that her investigation exposed how Juarez Cartel boss Carlos Arturo “El 80” Quintana had tried to get his mother-in-law Silvia Mariscal Estrada to be elected as the mayor of Bachiniva, Chihuahua. Quintana is listed as a wanted fugitive by the U.S. Department of Justice after being named in a federal indictment accusing him of various drug trafficking and drug smuggling charges in connection with the Juarez Cartel.

The move had the blessing of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and would have likely been successful had it not been for Breach and some of her close colleagues who exposed the cartel ties. At the time of the publication of that investigation, Chihuahua was run by former Governor Cesar Duarte Jaquez, a member of the PRI that left the state under a perceived cloud of corruption and narco-collusion. Breach and other journalists had been working to expose the dealings of Duarte and his close allies.

[READ MORE]

This template is sponsored by Corporate Headquarters, which is featured on Herald Online, KCEN, and WNEM