A veteran investigative journalist has been killed in the city of Caico. Francisco Gomes de Medeiros was shot five times outside his house last Monday. One line of police enquiry is focusing on reports the murder could be linked to Medeiros’ investigation of state assembly candidates running a crack-for-votes scheme in the 3 October general election. However a former prison inmate, Joao Francisco dos Santos, has been arrested he claimed to have committed the murder. This is the second high-profile media killing this month following 16 October murder of the owner of a small Sao Paulo newspaper.
The drug war continues to challenge the ways in which news and stories are disseminated in Mexico. While the newsmedia in many regions of this country work under the extreme censorship, organized crime has begun to taken it upon themselves to create news, by posting it on YouTube.
That was what happened last July when traffickers kidnapped four journalists and refused to release them until a local television channel aired a video that showed the director of the local prison worked with a competing drug gang. The video had been placed earlier on YouTube.
Today, Mexico´s media is abuzz because of yesterday morning´s release of a video in which a lawyer from Ciudad Juarez, Mario Angel Gonzalez Rodriguez, confesses that he and his sister, Patricia Gonzalez, the former state attorney general in the embattled state of Cihuahua (Ciudad Juarez), were on the payroll of the Cartel de Juarez. The video shows Rodriguez, who was kidnapped from his office a few days ago, surrounded by armed men in military garb and with face masks (a la Iraq). He claims the siblings ordered a number of high profile murders, including that of Armando Rodriguez, aka Choco, the journalist for the local daily El Diario de Juarez, murdered in 2008.
Legal experts have asked the government to investigate the veracity of the accusations. Hector Gonzalez Mocken, of the National Confederation of Lawyers said the video is a police issue and that the former attorney general should be investigated, without assuming that the allegations are true.
Rather than clearing the air, the video raises many questions which can only cause more uncertainty in the embattled city of Ciudad Juarez (which today encompasses 20 per cent of all the gangland slayings in the country) and Mexico as a whole. Do the armed men belong to paramilitary groups? Do they work for the Cartel de Sinaloa, which is today challenging the Juarez Cartel for the territory of Ciudad Juarez? (This city stands next to one of the most profitable US —Mexico border crosspoints, with roads that connect it to both the eastern and western coasts in the United States.) Are the cartel henchmen that well equipped—AK 47s, military uniforms and boots? If so, it illustrates not just their cartels power but their increasingly militaristic ambitions.
The release of the video shows how important a free and safe media is to a society. In an upcoming report my organisation, The Fundacion Mexicana de Periodismo de Investigation (MEPI) reveals that local media in Ciudad Juarez is only airing two or three stories out of ten dealing with narco-related violence. This even include investigations. No newspaper in Ciudad Juarez could give itself the luxury of investigating the charges alleged in the video, even though they are incendiary.
Cuban authorities have expelled prominent intellectual Esteban Morales from the Communist party after he alleged senior party members were corrupt. Writing on the Cuban National Artists and Writers Union’s website, Morales claimed that party bureaucracy and the greed of unnamed high ranking party members would be the downfall of the communist state. The article was quickly removed but not before being widely circulated. Rumours of corruption have been widespread in Cuba; two government ministers were recently being forced to resign following allegations that they had used state aircraft for personal gain.
Two policemen have been arrested, and the country’s most senior policeman suspended from duty, after the death of a human rights activist in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Voice of the Voiceless” campaigner Floribert Chebeya, whose body was discovered last week in a Kinshasa suburb, was last heard from shortly before attending a meeting ordered by the inspector general of the national police force, John Numbi. Following the arrest of two policemen suspected of killing Chebeya, Numbi was suspended on Sunday by the attorney general, to allow an internal investigation to take place. Chebeya’s death has prompted widespread international attention. Criticisms have also been raised over increased police harassment of human rights activists. Four DRC-based human rights campaigners have been murdered in the last four years.
