In Mexico, the thorny issue of impunity and motives
Mexican journalists gathered on Tuesday in Tijuana. They demanded justice after the murder the day before of one of their photographer colleagues in this same city located on the American border.
A memorial installed in August in Veracruz after the murder of journalist Jacinto Romero Flores.
AFP
Journalists gathered Tuesday in Tijuana in northwestern Mexico to demand justice after the murder the day before of one of their photographer colleagues, a homicide that raises the question of the fight against impunity and the motives of the crime.
Police affairs specialist Margarito Martinez, 49, was shot dead Monday at midday while leaving his home in the main border town with the United States. “It could be personal problems between neighbours,” local police said in a statement on Monday. “I cannot rule out any investigative leads,” California State Attorney Hiram Sanchez Zamora said at a press conference on Tuesday. The murder weapon had already been used in five other homicides, he added. At his side, journalists demanded justice for their murdered colleagues, including the photographer.
7 journalists killed in Mexico last year
The victim had asked in December for his “inclusion” in a “protection mechanism” for journalists, indicated the NGO Yosisoyperiodista (“I am a journalist”). “Our colleague had expressed his concern and his fear for his safety”, threatened by alleged “criminal groups”, according to the NGO. The journalist collaborated with the weekly Zeta and the daily La Jornada, as well as with international media reporting from Tijuana, a city that gave its name to a powerful drug cartel.
“We are at the most violent and closest border to the United States, where there are a lot of incidents,” the director of a journalists’ association, Jose Angel Inzounza, told AFPTV during the interview. demonstration Tuesday in Tijuana. “Generally these cases go unpunished. At the global level we have the honor of occupying the second rank of the riskiest countries to exercise journalism”, he added. A hundred journalists have been killed since 2000, according to figures from the Commission on Human Rights. At least seven journalists were killed in 2021, according to an AFP count, while trying to establish whether the victim was indeed a journalist still working and whether he had been killed because of his profession.
The Shadow of “Organized Crime”
This is the case in the state of Veracruz (southeast), where a journalist, José Luis Gamboa, was found stabbed to death on January 10, several sources said on Monday. Reporters Without Borders and the State Commission for the Protection of Journalists have asked investigators to take into account his status as a journalist. “Gamboa had denounced and strongly criticized the local authorities for their relationship with organized crime”, according to RSF. On his account followed by 1070 subscribers, the victim presented himself as the “general manager” of several online publications (Inforegio, La Noticia y el Regional del Norte”).
In one of his last articles at the end of December – in fact a long editorial – José Luis Gamboa denounced political actors “linked to organized crime” and the dangers that weigh on journalists. He did not collaborate with any other media, from local sources. The President of the Republic Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised information on “the motives of these assassinations” in a report on security which will be presented on Thursday.
In response to a question on Tuesday morning, the president dismissed the possibility that his own criticism of certain media outlets is endangering journalists: “That’s incorrect speculation.”
90% of crimes against journalists go unpunished in Mexico
Two men were convicted in 2020 and 2021 for the May 2017 murder of journalist Javier Valdez, a drug cartel specialist and also an AFP correspondent in the state of Sinaloa.
“It is an important sentence because it sets a precedent,” reacted his widow Griselda Triana, after the sentencing of one of the perpetrators of the murder to more than 32 years in prison in August 2021. A Breach-Valdez prize – promoted by Unesco, AFP and several European embassies– is to be awarded again in 2022 in honor of Javier Valdez and Miroslava Breach.
Miroslava Breach was shot in March 2017 with eight bullets to the head in the state of Chihuahua (north). She had published an article in the daily La Jornada claiming that criminals belonging to various organizations were seeking to stand in local elections. The prize, which rewards Mexican investigative journalists, had been put on hold for two years due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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