02 May 12 | Mexico
Mexico’s Congress this week approved a law for the protection of human rights workers and journalists. The law requires that journalists and media outlets facing attacks because of their work should be offered protection.
The law was unanimously approved, perhaps as a result of the news that on 27 April, two days before the vote, journalist Regina Hernandez was found beaten and strangled in her home in the southern state of Veracruz.
In March, the murder of journalists was made a federal crime. State and municipal authorities are often suspected of being susceptible to pressure from organised crime groups or corrupt local officials. Most of the murders of journalists occur in the interior of Mexico, very often on the US border, where intense drug cartel wars have made the region one of the most dangerous in the world for reporters.
01 Apr 12 | Americas, Mexico
Wiretapping has become so fashionable in Mexico that it could pose a problem for freedom of expression. The latest victim of this type of espionage was presidential candidate Josefina Vasquez Mota, of the ruling National Political Action Party (PAN). A telephone conversation in which Mota is heard complaining that National Security Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna spends more time spying on her than on fugitive drug kingpin Joaquin Chapo Guzman was released publically and made available on video sharing site YouTube.
Many of the wiretaps released in Mexico in the past have involved politicians or aspiring candidates during electoral periods. But in a country at war with organised crime, and where the number of journalists killed because of what they write or know is among the highest in the world, it is worrisome that nobody is alarmed by this eavesdropping fashionista streak.
Access to eavesdropping equipment in Mexico is easily done. US and Mexican authorities use eavesdropping to get access to information on organised crime cases, which is of concern as many times these wiretaps are carried out with information that might not be totally correct. However, both US and Mexican authorities say the practice is important and useful as it has helped them nab high-level organised crime figures.
What worries journalists and other freedom of expression advocates, however is how is organised crime and corrupt government officials use wiretaps to curb a free press.
30 Mar 12 | Americas, Index Index, minipost
National Mexican television network Televisa, based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, suffered a bomb attack on 25 March. No one was injured in the blast, which occurred in the wake of two other attacks in the same part of northern Mexico. On 19 March a car bomb explosion took place at the offices of the daily Expreso in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state. Expreso subsequently removed a statement on the attack from its website. The Durango home of Víctor Montenegro, editor of the weekly El Contralor, also faced a shooting attack during the night of 24 March. Televisa was hit by similar blasts in August 2010, though no injuries were caused.
10 Jan 12 | Americas, Index Index, minipost
A Mexican journalist has been murdered by an armed gang during a high-speed car chase. Raúl Régulo Garza Quirino, from local weekly newspaper La Última Palabra, in Nuevo León, was killed as he tried to escape the bullets of an armed gang who were firing at him from two pursuing vehicles. Quirino’s body was discovered in front of a mechanic shop, owned by a relative. Quirino is the first journalist to be killed in Mexico in 2012. In 2011, the country was named the world’s most dangerous country to practice journalism, by the International Press Institute (IPI).
