NAVADENEWS - Surprising Mexican President's visit to the US has led to international pressure on journalists' deaths - US senators used Mexican Presidents Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Joe Biden this week to increase pressure on the killing of journalists in the Latino.
In 6 months, 12 media
professionals were killed in Mexico, a number that more than exceeds the number
of journalists killed during the war in Ukraine. In the latest recorded raid,
reporter Susana Carreño survived after being stabbed by an unknown person
earlier this month.
Deadly violence against the press
in Mexico is taking a toll on the US Hispanic community and has pressured
congressional politicians to demand López Obrador increase security for Mexican
officials.
US lawmakers defend protection for journalists
The Mexican president's visit was
preceded by strong statements against US action on the issue of WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange.
The following week, López Obradorsuggested destroying the Statue of Liberty if the Australian journalist was
arrested and died in an American prison.
The meeting with Joe Biden,
however, had a more welcoming tone than the Mexican's speech when it was in his
country.
“Happy to sit down with President
López Obrador and discuss the broad and deep partnership between our
countries,” the American posted on social media after the meeting.
While diplomatic matters were
handled in a friendly manner, a group of 10 senators took the opportunity to
come up with a resolution calling for the protection of Mexican journalists.
Signed by Bob Menendez, chairman
of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Team Kaine, chair of the Western
Hemisphere Subcommittee, and eight other Democratic senators, the document
calls on the Mexican government for a "universal and impartial
investigation" into violence against journalists.
"In recent years, Mexico has
become the most risky country in the world outside of a war zone for
journalists," Menéndez said in a statement.
"With 12 Mexican journalists
killed in the first 6 months of 2022, pressure action is needed to end
hostilities against press freedom."
Lawmakers condemned
"unchanged large-scale violence" against Mexican media outlets and
stressed that the government must help local and state entities to protect
them.
"Freedom of the press must
always be the cornerstone of all democratic countries, including Mexico,"
said Senator Kaine. "In essence, this resolution underscores the pressing
need to protect journalists who risk their lives to tell the truth."
Mexico's federal and state
governments have been criticized by the press and international organizations
for failing to prevent killing media professionals or carrying out sufficient
investigations to identify those responsible for the crimes.
In the latest Global Press
Freedom Rankings by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the country is ranked
127th out of 180 countries surveyed, and increasing violence makes Mexico a
very lethal country for journalists.
President Lopéz Obrador adopted
harsh speeches against the press in his public demonstrations, especially when
there was some criticism of his government or members of his family. Among the
frequent insults are accusations that the media are defending interest groups
and that journalists are mercenaries.
During a dialogue about Assange a
week later, for example, the Mexican leader was confronted with information
about the death of a journalist in that country.
In Mexico, journalists react to each death with the fear of being next
With violence continuing to
spiral out of control in Mexico, media outlets are terrified.
In a post for Nieman Lab,
award-winning journalist Marcela Turati, who has been closely monitoring the
invasion of her colleagues in the country, describes what it's like to live in
the shadows of being the next victim.
"It doesn't matter whether
the journalists understand the victim or not. Each murder rekindles feelings of
worry, terror, hopelessness, anger and sadness that have accumulated over
time," he wrote.
For Marcela, for the past 20
years, Mexican journalists have challenged the idea that they could die
"just to do their job", when investigating topics that cross the
interests of third parties.
Citing information from the NGO
Artigo 19, the journalist said that 150 journalists have been murdered in
Mexico since 2000—and many of them fall within the government's protection
programme. Twenty-nine have also disappeared in the last 2 decades.
He contextualized that violence
against media professionals increased in 2006, when the president at the time
introduced a policy of “war on drugs”.
"Since then, Mexican
journalists have become war correspondents in our own country," he said.
And he added that most of the victims were local journalists, from areas far
from the Mexican capital and covering police, organized crime and political
corruption.
In recent raid, journalist stabbed in Mexico
The most recent recorded attack
in the country by groups monitoring global journalism was against Mexican
reporter Susana Carreño, of UDG radio, a station affiliated with the University
of Guadalajara.
On July 1, the car he was driving
with his colleague from the radio station was hit by another vehicle.
2 men approached the position of
the motorcycle accident, lashed out at the journalist with a gun, forced him
out of the car and lay down in the lane. During that time, he was stabbed
several times, leaving him with serious injuries to his chest and neck.
Susana survived the attack and is
still recovering. The governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro, described the action
as a robbery and, so far, it has not been determined whether it was a specific
crime or whether it was directed at journalists.
But, for UDG director Gabriel
Torres, the action was intentional. Susana recently briefed on allegations of
corruption and illegal work in the field of crime, Torres told the Committee to
Protect Journalists (CPJ).
