Mexican

We issued the following statement in response to the murder of Mexican reporter Miguel Angel Villagómez, editor of the newspaper La Noticia in the state of Michoacán, whose bullet-ridden body was found today in the neighboring state of Guerrero, according to press reports. “We mourn the death of our colleague Miguel Angel Villagómez and urge…

Our special report on press freedom in Mexico, “The Disappeared,” has received a great deal of coverage in the Spanish-language press since its release yesterday. The report is covered in the Mexican dailies Excelsior, El Financiero, Tabasco Hoy, and La Cronica de Hoy. It was also covered in the Argentina-based Pagina12 as well as the Colombian news site Semana. The International Herald Tribune is running AP’s…

October 2008News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

New York, September 30, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the U.S. government to explain its decision not to renew visas of two New York-based, United Nations-accredited Cuban correspondents.

In Mexico, seven reporters have vanished in three years. Many had investigated links between public officials and drug traffickers. Are the crime groups changing tactics, or is a new type of perpetrator at work? 

New York, September 25, 2008–Mexican radio host Alejandro Zenón Fonseca Estrada was gunned down Tuesday as he was putting up anticrime posters in Villahermosa, capital of the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco. The Committee to Protect Journalists is investigating possible links between Fonseca’s work as a journalist and his killing. Four unidentified men riding in…

In Mexico, where violence against the press has become an epidemic, a debate is raging about what should be done to confront this terrible problem. Since 2000, 21 journalists have been killed, seven of them in direct reprisal for their work. The record of violence has produced widespread self-censorship, particularly among regional journalists covering drug…

It sounds like the plot of a B movie. The charred corpse of a missing female U.S. Marine and her fetus are found buried beneath a fire pit in the backyard of a male U.S. Marine whom she had previously accused of rape. The Marine suspect flees North Carolina for south of the border where…

As the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing came to an official close yesterday, many news outlets are looking at back what the Games mean for human rights in China. The Canadian Press has a piece arguing that nothing has changed, despite the pleasant face China put on for its international visitors. The Ottawa Citizen  is…

New York, August 8, 2008–With new allegations of the beating of a journalist by soldiers, the Mexican military must develop procedures to ensure that the press can cover its operations, said the Committee to Protect Journalists today.