Mexico arrests ex-cop over slayings

World News Report: Police arrested a man “identified as Abraham Torres Tranquilino” for alleged involvement in the killing of Ruben Espinosa, rights activist Nadia Vera and three other female victims, Mexico City prosecutor Rodolfo Rios said in a statement.

Espinosa and the other victims were found dead on July 31 this year in a Mexico City apartment, their hands bound and their bodies bearing signs of torture. Read more. 

Veracruz journalist shot dead after reporting on oil theft

Committee to Protect Journalists: The body of Veracruz radio journalist Armando Saldaña Morales was found on Monday in the neighboring Mexican state of Oaxaca, according to the Oaxaca state attorney general's office and news reports. The journalist had been shot dead, the reports said. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder and calls on authorities to identify the motive in the killing and ensure the perpetrators are held to account.

"Journalists have paid a high price for reporting the news in Mexico-they are routinely murdered or disappeared with total impunity," said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Americas, from New York. "Federal authorities must fully investigate this crime, look deeply into Armando Saldaña Morales' reporting as a possible motive, and bring those responsible to justice." Read more. 

Latin American Herald Tribune - Sexism of Authorities Aggravates Violence Against Women Journalists in Mexico

Latin American Herald Tribune: The sexism of Mexican authorities generates impunity and has led to a 300 percent increase in violence against women journalists in just a decade, according to a report presented by an NGO.

In the last few years 86 cases of violence against women journalists were reported, of which 54 percent occurred in 2013, the study by the Communication and Information for Women organization (CIMAC) revealed. Read more. 

Mexican Authorities Extend Protection to Journalist

Latin American Herald Tribune: Police in Mexico have extended protection to a journalist whose 12-year-old son was fatally shot last week in an attack on the family’s home.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders issued a statement earlier this week calling on Mexican authorities to protect Indalecio Benitez, director of La Calentana Mexiquense, a community radio station in the central state of Mexico.  Read more. 

Mexico Lags in Taking Steps to Protect Journalists, According to Several Reports

April 28, 2014
Justice in Mexico 

According to a recent review by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Mexico ranks in the bottom seven countries worldwide in its efforts to investigate and punish crimes against journalists. With this ranking, Mexico remains in the same position it found itself in 2013 in CPJ’s Global Impunity Index, ranking above only Iraq, Somalia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Syria, and Afghanistan.

CPJ found that Mexico has 0.132 unsolved murders of journalists per million inhabitants. By comparison, Iraq, at the bottom of the list, had 3.067 unsolved murders per million inhabitants. Afghanistan, ranking 6th, had 0.168, while India (13th) had just 0.006. Colombia and Brazil were the only other Latin American countries included on the list, with Colombia ranking one spot below Mexico, with 0.126 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants, and Brazil at the 11th position, with 0.045. CPJ criticized that “justice continued to evade Mexican journalists who face unrelenting violence for reporting on crime and corruption.” The organization reports 16 journalists killed with impunity during the past ten years, with one killed in 2014, though other groups, including Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, CNDH) estimate the number to be much higher. CPJ did recognize Mexico’s efforts last April to create a special federal prosecutor for pursuing crimes against journalists that circumvents what it deems “more corrupt and less effective state law enforcement officials.” Nevertheless, it says, many criticize that the new office has thus far been slow to implement its new authority. The report points out the failed prosecution in the case of Proceso reporter Regina Martínez Pérez, killed in 2012, in which some, including the editorial board of Proceso, believe that the wrong person was convicted for her murder. It also mentions the dismissal of charges last September against one of the men alleged to have gunned down Zeta magazine editor J. Jesús Blancornelas in 1997. These shortcomings, says CPJ, “further fueled concerns that the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto is not up to the task of breaking Mexico’s cycle of impunity and violence.” Read more. 

Journalist: Drugs destroying Mexico

CNN
November 8th, 2013

Becky Anderson talks with Mexican investigative journalist Anabel Hernández about the country's war on drugs who also wrote an Op-ed for CNN.com. You can read it below:

Since December 2010, I have lived with death threats because I have documented and revealed corruption at the highest levels in the Mexican government. My family has been attacked, I have to live with bodyguards and some of my sources have been killed or are in jail.

But my case is just one of many. A large number of journalists and human rights activists - as well as those who denounce corruption in Mexico - receive similar threats or have been killed. And the biggest danger is not in fact the drug cartels, but rather the government and business officials that work for them and fear exposure.

My new book "Narcoland" is the result of five grueling years of research. Over this time I gradually became immersed in a shadowy world full of traps, lies, betrayals, and contradictions.  Read more. 

MORE THAN FIFTEEN JOURNALISTS ASSAULTED DURING MEXICO CITY MARCHES

Reporters Without Borders
October 3, 2013

Reporters Without Borders condemns the assault of more than fifteen journalists by demonstrators and police in Mexico City yesterday while they were covering parades marking the 45th anniversary of a student massacre in 1968. The figure is conservative.

“Reporters Without Borders calls on the Special Attorney’s office for Crimes against Freedom of Expression (FEADLE) to open independent investigations to get to the bottom of these assaults and punish those responsible,” the press freedom organization said.

“We have previously noted that that abuses directed at journalists covering demonstrations will continue unless they are punished. The trivialization of violence against journalists undermines media coverage of events of this nature. We point out that, without journalists, the demonstrators’ message would not be heard by the public.”

Guillermo Barros of the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) told Reporters Without Borders: “I was covering the parade when the police started hitting the demonstrators to disperse them. Even though I identified myself as a journalist, a police officer struck me on the head with his baton.”  Read more. 

Journalist found slain in Mexican state of Oaxaca

LA Times
By Richard Fausset and Cecilia Sanchez
July 17, 2013

A journalist who covered the police beat in the Mexican state of Oaxaca was found dead Wednesday, reportedly with gunshot wounds.

It was unclear whether Alberto Lopez Bello was attacked in retaliation for his work for El Imparcial, a newspaper in the city of Oaxaca, the state capital. The paper published a brief statement Wednesday demanding a thorough investigation and saying the killing “demonstrates the vulnerability to which communicators are exposed in their daily work of providing truthful and timely information to the citizenry.” [link in Spanish]

The Oaxacan state government said that Lopez's body was found along with the corpse of another man in Trinidad de Viguera, a city north of the Oaxacan capital. The news website Milenio reported that Lopez suffered gunshot wounds.  Read more. 

Mexican journalists, rights groups march against attacks in which scores have been slain

The Huffington Post
By Associated Press
April 28, 2013

XALAPA, Mexico — Officials in Veracruz state say they know who killed Regina Martinez. The muckraking reporter, found beaten and suffocated in her house, was just the victim of a robbery, according to prosecutors and a local court.

But many of her colleagues don’t believe it. The man convicted of the crime was tortured into a confession, they allege. And the magazine she works for says state officials discussed sending police across the country in an attempt to hunt down and seize another reporter who raised questions about the death, which is one of a growing list of killings that have put Mexico among the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist.


Some 400 people gathered Sunday in the center of Veracruz’s state capital, Xalapa, for a march to demand justice in the Martinez case and an end to attacks on the press. Many held up posters suggesting the government had a hand in the case, some describing it as “a state killing.” Dozens also protested in Mexico City.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a February report that 12 Mexican journalists went missing in 2006-2012 and 14 were killed because of their work. Mexico’s federal Human Rights Commission lists 81 journalists killed since 2000.  Read more. 

Full investigation needed in Mexican journalist's murder

Committee to Protect Journalists 

Mexico City, April 25, 2013--The Committee to Protect Journalists joins journalists with the Mexican daily Vanguardia in calling on authorities to launch an efficient and thorough investigation into the murder of photographer Daniel Martínez Balzaldúa.

Martínez's body was found with that of a friend, Julián Zamora Garcia, early Wednesday morning on a street in Saltillo, Vanguardía reported. He had last been seen by his colleagues at the daily's offices around 3 p.m. Tuesday before he left to cover an event. He never arrived.

Martínez, 22, had worked for Vanguardia for only a month and had been assigned to the daily's society section, which is an entry-level position, according to Ricardo Mendoza, the paper's editorial director. Another editor at Vanguardia, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, told CPJ that the climate of fear in Coahuila state prevented the newspaper from doing any investigation in stories with links to organized crime. Photographers covering the society section in Mexico have been targeted by organized crime groups in the past for inadvertently capturing images of cartel members, according to CPJ research.  Read more.

Mexico reporter Regina Martinez's murderer sentenced

BBC
April 10, 2013

A judge in Mexico has sentenced a man to 38 years in prison over the 2012 murder of crime reporter Regina Martinez Perez.

Jorge Antonio Hernandez Silva was found guilty of homicide and robbery.

Regina Martinez, a correspondent for news magazine Proceso, was found beaten and strangled to death in her home in Xalapa, in eastern Veracruz state.

The prosecution says Hernandez confessed the crime, but colleagues of Ms Martinez say he was set up.

Ms Martinez had been working for the investigative news magazine Proceso for 10 years when her brothers reported finding her body in her home.

Read more. 

Body-snatchers in Mexico?

I've been hearing a lot of off-the-record reports from journalist friends about a editorial board pressures to stop reporting on deaths. The general line is that government wants to show some progress (although Peña Nieto has now asked for a year to decrease the violence) and so the easiest way to reduce the figures is to stop counting.

This article could be part of that new tendency. The disappearance of bodies, suppression of the press, local officials encouraged to under-count-all; this bodes ill for those of us trying to track the drug war.

Miami Herald 
By Christopher Sherman
Associated Press

Reynosa, Mexico -- Heavy gunfire echoed along the main thoroughfare and across several neighborhoods in a firefight that lasted for hours, leaving perforated and burned vehicles scattered across the border city.

Social media exploded with reports of dozens dead. Witnesses saw at least 12.

But the hours of intense gun battles in Reynosa on March 10 gave way to an official body count the next day of a head-scratching two.

The men who handle the city's dead insist the real figure is upward of 35, likely even more than 50. Ask where those bodies are and they avert their eyes and shift in their seats.

Cartel members, they say, are retrieving and burying their own casualties.

"Physically, there are no bodies," said Ramon Martinez, director of Funerales San Jose in Reynosa, who put the toll at between 40 and 50. "It's very delicate."

If Reynosa is an example, even the government can't count how many are dying from drug violence. The Felipe Calderon government stopped counting in September 2011. Since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office Dec. 1, the government has issued monthly statistics, saying that January killings were down slightly from December, and that February saw the lowest number of killings in 40 months - without providing numbers for the other 39 months.

Fake Mexico TV crew jailed in Nicaragua for 30 years

BBC
January 18, 2013

A court in Nicaragua has jailed for 30 years each 18 people who tried to enter the country with $9.2m (£5.8m), posing as Mexican TV journalists.

A judge in Managua found them guilty of money-laundering and organising a drug link between Mexico and Costa Rica.

They were arrested in August after police found the cash and traces of cocaine in six vans, some painted with Mexico's Televisa network logo.

Central America is increasingly a transit route for Mexican drug gangs.

The only woman in the group was named as their leader and sentenced to 20 years for international drug-trafficking, eight-and-a-half years for organised crime and seven years for money-laundering - a total of more than 35 years.

However, 30 years is set by Nicaraguan law as the maximum prison sentence.

"Raquel Alatorre Correa will finish her sentence on 24 August, 2042," said the judge.

The money and the vans have been confiscated by the judge.

The 18 Mexicans had already been found guilty in December but were awaiting their sentences.

At the time of their arrest, the self-proclaimed journalists said they had been sent to cover a high-profile murder for Televisa, Mexico's biggest TV network, but the company quickly denied any link to the group. Read more. 

Twitter: The Safest Place for Citizen Journalists in Mexico

Mashable: Fran Berkman

A cohort of Twitter users with fake names and profile pictures have become a trusted source of information regarding drug cartel violence in Mexico.

These citizen journalists choose to remain anonymous to avoid violent backlash from gang members, but their reports have become increasingly influential.

On Jan. 8, a team from Microsoft Research published a paper called "The New War Correspondents: The Rise of Civic Media Curation in Urban Warfare," which details a social media study conducted over the past two years. Their main finding was that as Mexicans increasingly turn to Twitter for reports of violence, a core of mostly anonymous yet trusted curators have led the dissemination of public safety information.

"You find this small cluster of people, whom we call curators, who tend to be really well-regarded in their cities," Andrés Monroy-Hernández, one of the paper's five co-authors, tells Mashable. "These particular curators are those that have a lot of followers, which means that they're somewhat trusted by the community."

In the paper, the authors discuss how difficult it was to contact and interview the curators, who feel the work puts their lives in danger. Read more. 

Mexican press: Self preservation becomes self censorship

XIndex  November 16, 2012

In Mexico drug cartels continue to dictate news agenda and in some areas, have even infiltrated the newsroom. A new investigation by Fundacion MEPI reveals the extent to which news outlets fear of cartel retaliation and a shortage of accurate government information keep the public in the dark.

MEXICO CITY – It was 38 minutes into the First Division football match at the Santos Modelo Stadium, about 275 miles from the US border, when players suddenly started running from the pitch to their locker rooms. Popping sounds interrupted the announcers. More than one million Mexican television viewers watched as a firefight between the country’s most ruthless drug cartel and local police unfolded.

The images broadcast from the industrial town of Torreon showed terrified men, women and children crouching under the stadium seats and scrambling for cover. Television Azteca, the second largest Mexican network, stopped transmission of the game. But ESPN continued, breaking its audience records worldwide for a domestic soccer match.

It was the first time drug-related violence had played out on live television alongside the country’s beloved national sport. But it also highlighted another battle, one raging inside the local Mexican media as criminal groups have continue to muzzle regional reporting on drug violence —  savagery that has left more than 60,000 dead since outgoing President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006.

Despite the stadium gun battle’s obvious news value, in the newsroom of the local daily El Siglo de Torreon, editors and reporters pondered whether to publish news of the shootout in a prominent place in the following day’s paper.  The attack had pitted the Zetas organised crime group against a municipal police contingent parked near the stadium.  Read more. 

Journalist shot dead on assignment in Mexico

Committee to Protect Journalists  Mexico City, November 15, 2012--A freelance journalist and his companion were shot to death Wednesday in the central Mexican state of Puebla shortly after the reporter had gathered information on a large-scale gasoline theft and then witnessed a stand-off between soldiers and gunmen, according to news reports and CPJ interviews.

"In many areas of Mexico, reporters put their lives at risk every time they go out on assignment. These brazen murders are yet another example of the violent and lawless conditions in which journalists work," Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Americas, said from New York. "Mexican authorities must fully investigate these murders and bring those responsible to justice."

News reports and local journalists identified the slain journalist as Adrián Silva Moreno, who covered the local police beat for several small newspapers. Eloísa Rodríguez Zamora, a local radio reporter, said Silva had been covering an army investigation into the theft of gasoline from a government petroleum company in the town of Tehuacán. Theft of gasoline from government pipelines is common in the area, which is controlled by organized crime groups, according to local journalists. Read more. 

Shaky Case Against Suspect in Mexican Journalist's Murder Raises Suspicions

InSightCrime, Written by Geoffrey Ramsey Friday, 09 November 2012

The arrest of a man accused of the murder of a journalist investigating crime and corruption in Veracruz raises more questions than answers, pointing to the failures of law enforcement and power of criminal groups in the Mexican state.

On October 30, Veracruz's attorney general announced that police had arrested Jorge Antonio Hernandez Silva, alias "El Silva," on suspicion of involvement in the April murder of journalist Regina Martinez Perez. The official said that the suspect had confessed to helping another person commit the crime. The man who physically carried out the murder, according to authorities, is Jose Adrian Hernandez Dominguez, alias "El Jarocho," allegedly Martinez's romantic partner, who remains at large.

Yet as El Proceso reports, there is reason to doubt Silva's involvement in Martinez's murder. The day after his supposed "confession," the suspect said he had been coerced into admitting guilt by police who tortured him and threatened to kill his mother. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) notes that without the confession, there appears to be little proof of Silva's involvement, as prosecutors have made no mention of eyewitness, DNA or fingerprint evidence linking him to the scene of the crime. Nevertheless, authorities ordered Silva to be held in pre-trial detention on November 2. Read more. 

Mexican journalists question truth of murder trial

The Guardian  It is very rare for anyone in Mexico to be arrested for murdering a journalist, let alone appear before a court. So the trial in Veracruz of a man charged with killing Regina Martínez Pérez should be a reason to celebrate.

But, according to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), it looks as if the state "is fabricating a murder case against the wrong people."

Citing unnamed "federal officials" as its source, the report says that the man who originally confessed to the murder, Jorge Hernández Silva, has since retracted his confession, claiming that he had been tortured while his mother was also threatened with death if he did not confess. Read more. 

Censorship in Mexico: The Case of Ruy Salgado

Americas Quarterly October 29, 2012 by Arjan Shahani

Most people outside of Mexico may have never heard of Ruy Salgado. But during the most recent electoral contest here, that name not only became known throughout Internet circles in Mexico, but was arguably one of the most influential voices of opposition in the country.

Ruy Salgado, a pseudonym, has an online alias known as el 5anto. Salgado is a nonprofit video blogger whose notoriety increased during these past elections for his very critical view of both the transparency of the process and the role of the mainstream media in “manipulating the truth.” He was also one of the most vocal in denouncing what he referred to as institutionalized fraud in the results that will bring the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party—PRI) back to power on December 1. Read more. 

Mexico's drug cartels target journalists in brutal killing spree

The Guardian, Ed Vulliamy

He shakes as he speaks and at moments his eyes fill. "It's certain that the people who killed my colleague were criminals," he says. "The killing had the modus operandi of organised crime. But who sent them and why? That's the question, that's the smokescreen."

This is a colleague of Víctor Manuel Báez Chino, whose mutilated body was found in June in the main square of Xalapa, capital of the Mexican coastal state of Veracruz. Báez was the state's crime editor for an online edition of the national newspaper Milenio and editor of the Police Report website (currently down) which covered crime.

In August, state prosecutors declared the case closed. Witnesses, they said, had identified the bodies of two men killed in a shootout as the same people who had kidnapped the reporter. Báez's circles were "entirely unconvinced", says his colleague.

Báez is one of 56 journalists killed during Mexico's drug war since 2006 (a figure calculated by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists). The war reached a climax last week with the killing by Mexican marines of the leader of the wildest – albeit not the biggest – narco cartel: the paramilitary Zetas, which counts Veracruz, with its strategically crucial gulf port, among its strongholds. Read more.