Mexico Proves Most Lethal Non-War State for Journalists in 2017
Mexico Proves Most Lethal Non-War State for Journalists in 2017
By Les Neuhaus • 12/22/17 2:20pm
At least six Mexican journalists were murdered in 2017 due to their coverage of the country’s endemic corruption, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a press advocacy group, said on Thursday in an annual report compiling such fatalities.
Joel Simon, the director of CPJ, told Observer by telephone from New York that the spike in killings in Mexico was continuation of a problem where a government with no backbone failed to hold cartel-associated assailants accountable.
“It sort of depends on how you define ‘lack of will’…this is a historic problem that transcends various Mexican administrations,” Simon told Observer. “Each time we have a meeting with government officials there, they say they’re going to take steps to improve their investigations. And they have the structure to do it, so there are no excuses. There are powerful forces at the regional level who are implicated in these killings. It’s about whether the government wants to probe these investigations and the answer is almost always, ‘No.’”
CPJ reported on the murder of Cecilio Pineda Birto, who was gunned down by his killers from a motorcycle while waiting for his car to be washed. He was shot at least 10 times. Gunmen ambushed Javier Valdez Cárdenas after he left work, blocking his car while they shot him at least 12 times. And Miroslava Breach Velducea was leaving her home with her children when her murderers shot her eight times. She died while being transported to a hospital.
More:
http://observer.com/2017/12/iraq-syria-mexico-see-the-most-journalist-fatalities-in-2017/
