Margarito Martinez was assassinated Monday in Tijuana. The previous week, it was José Luis Gamboa, a former journalist converted to analysis on social networks, who had been stabbed in Veracruz.
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A macabre list that never stops growing. In Mexico, photojournalist Margarito Martinez was murdered in Tijuana, a city in the northwest of the country, on Monday January 17. He was the target “of an assault with a firearm”, according to a statement from the Baja California Department of State Security. The 49-year-old reporter was threatened in December by bloggers, according to the NGO YoSiSoyPeriodista (“I am a journalist”).
The photographer, specializing in police affairs, worked for several Mexican publications. The General Prosecutor’s Office announced the opening of an investigation, stating: “Freedom of expression, in all its forms, is a fundamental right of citizens.”
He is the second journalist killed since the beginning of 2022 in Mexico. The previous week, José Luis Gamboa, a former journalist turned social media analyst, had been stabbed in Veracruz. He was not subject to any “history of assault” or of “threat” and was not protected, according to the State Commission for the Protection of Journalists.
Remember that Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, due to reprisals from drug trafficking cartels. At least seven journalists have been killed in 2021, according to an AFP tally, and around 100 reporters have been murdered since 2000, according to figures from the Commission on Human Rights.