New York, June 10, 2008—The editor of an evening daily in southern Mexico was threatened in a note left outside the front door of the newspaper’s office building on Monday, two days after a severed human head was found near the same spot, according to news reports and a CPJ interview. Editorial Director Juan Padilla…
Mexico City, June 9, 2008—President Felipe Calderón today pledged his commitment to federalize crimes against freedom of expression in a meeting with the Committee to Protect Journalists in Mexico City. Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora announced draft legislation that would amend Article 73 of Mexico’s political constitution and would make a federal offense any crime…
Versión en españolPosted June 7, 2008Mexico is not at war. It is a democracy. And yet it is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the press. Twenty-one journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000, seven of them in direct reprisal for their work. Since 2005, seven others have gone missing. Mexico ranks…
New York, May 7, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly concerned by allegations that federal police agents assaulted three reporters working in Culiacán, the capital of the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa. At approximately 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, three reporters working for the newspaper El Debate went to report on a roadside checkpoint being…
CPJ’s Impunity Index ranks countries where killers of journalists go free New York, April 30, 2008 — Democracies from Colombia to India and Russia to the Philippines are among the worst countries in the world at prosecuting journalists’ killers according to the Impunity Index, a list of countries compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists…
Radio director’s home shot at by unidentified gunmen New York, April 25, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the shooting of a Mexican journalist’s house in the southern state of Oaxaca, in what appears to have been a targeted attack, on April 18. The day before the shooting, Melchor López, general director of…
New York, April 18, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes Wednesday’s conviction of two men by a Peruvian court in the March 2007 murder of radio journalist Miguel Pérez Julca. A court in the northwestern Peruvian city of Jaén convicted Juan Hurtado Vásquez of masterminding Pérez’s murder and Nazario Coronel Ramírez, also known as “Chamaya,”…
MEXICO: New York, April 10, 2008—Two community radio hosts who were also indigenous activists were shot and killed on Monday when gunmen opened fire at their vehicle on a rural highway in southern Oaxaca. The Committee to Protect Journalists is investigating possible links between the slayings and the journalists’ work. Teresa Bautista Merino, 24, and…
New York, April 7, 2008—Four men have been convicted and sentenced to 11 years apiece in the November 2004 murder of Mexican photographer Gregorio Rodríguez Hernández. The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the convictions as an important step against impunity in attacks on the press. Judge Daniel Armenta Rentería convicted former Escuinapa Police Chief Abel…