Mexican journalists are protesting en masse. This year alone, three people from the media were murdered there

The protests began after the death of the journalist Lourdes Maldonado, who had been investigating corruption and alerted, among others, three years ago. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador that he is afraid for his life. She was shot on Sunday in her own car in a neighborhood in Tijuana. A few days earlier – on January 17 – photographer Alfonso Margarito Martínez Esquivel was killed in broad daylight in front of his house in broad daylight. This makes the region almost the most dangerous place in the world for journalists outside of the war zone.

Mexican journalists are protesting en masse

The Black Series began on January 10. Then the reporter José Luis Gamboa Arenas died – according to media reports, he was stabbed in the port of Veracruz. The outrage of public opinion is all the greater because Lourdes Maldonado was to be registered in the journalists protection program, which provides, inter alia, police home security – reports the agency

Journalists and ordinary citizens took to the streets in several cities across the country. Slogans such as “Journalism is a risk”, “We are furious with censorship”, “You will not kill the truth by killing journalists”, “Justice for Lourdes and Margarito”, “I’m a journalist too” appear on banners. Participants in a demonstration in the state of Puebla laid flowers and candles on pavements.

Mass protests in Mexico Fot. Eduardo Verdugo / AP Photo

Jan-Albert Hootsen, representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists comments for:

The relentless violence against journalists in this country is a direct consequence of the passivity of the authorities, which are unable and unwilling to fight the hideous impunity that fuels the murder.

Attacks on journalists are most often direct retaliation for their work, and as commented by foreign media, representatives of local authorities are often suspected of commissioning the murders. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador himself has a habit of publicly criticizing individual media representatives in his weekly press conferences on the “Who’s Who in Lies of the Week” series – he conducts them to mention alleged media distortions.

The Article 19 human rights association reports that 145 journalists were murdered in Mexico from 2000 to 2021. The Journalists’ Protection Committee reports that in 2021 alone, nine journalists were killed in this country, which means that, next to India and Afghanistan, it is one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, reports The New York Times.