Sunday Times 2
Global journalist bodies take up Mexico’s impunity crisis
View(s):An international mission comprising of 17 international organisations, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters without Borders and the International Press Institute, has arrived in Mexico, considered the world’s deadliest country for journalists, to hold talks with government authorities with a view to finding a solution to the country’s freedom of express crisis.
An activist takes part in a protest against the killing of journalists in Mexico. The words painted on the mouth reads: “No to Silence”. Reuters/Henry Romero
According to reports, more than 99 percent of murders and disappearances of journalists in Mexico remain unsolved and there are no guarantees that journalists can carry out their work free from retaliation, threats, violence and intimidation.
The journalist delegation met Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador other government Mexican government officials to express their concern over the shrinking space for journalists to carry out their work without any fear.
They urged the Mexican government to reduce by 2 percent the annual rate of impunity for crimes against journalists, which currently sits at over 99 percent; to implement 104 recommendations given by the United Nations with respect to Mexico’s protection mechanism for journalists and human rights defenders; and to put a stop to discourse that stigmatizes and increases the vulnerability of thousands of journalists in the country, according to a report in the Big News Network.
Forty-nine journalists have been murdered in Mexico in the last five years alone, according to International Press Institute’s Death Watch. This year, nine out of 25 journalist murders – over one-third – have occurred in Mexico.
Despite the existence of a Federal Protection Mechanism set up in 2012 to protect journalists and a special prosecutor dedicated to investigating attacks on freedom of expression, the impunity rate for crimes committed against freedom of expression sits at a shocking 99 percent, according to a study released earlier this year.
Mission delegates also took part in a ceremony to honour the memory of Mexico’s murdered journalists as well as a UNESCO regional seminar on ending impunity for crimes against journalists in Latin America.
(Courtesy IPI and Big News Network)