Dozens of journalists demand justice for murders and violence against unions in Mexico

Mexico City, Jul 10 (EFE).- Dozens of journalists, media workers, and activists demonstrated this Monday in Mexico City to demand justice for the Murder of the correspondent for the newspaper La Jornada in the state of Nayarit, Luis Martín Sánchez Iñiguez, which occurred last Saturday.

In the protest, which took place in front of the headquarters of the Secretariat of the Interior (Ministry of the Interior), the journalists demanded that the authorities resolve the case of Sánchez Iñiguez and other colleagues who have been murdered in previous months and years in various states of the country and asked for labor improvements.

“Every time a journalist is attacked, democracy is attacked. In this government (headed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador) it has been said that there is a commitment to democracy, but we see that journalists continue to be killed and that is a contradiction,” said a journalist who is a member of the Red Rompe el Miedo, a platform for media, journalists, and human rights defenders for protection and security at work.

“We ask and demand that justice be done, that the authorities receive us, that the necessary adjustments be made. We have been demanding modifications to the Protection Mechanism for journalists and human rights defenders and we have not received an answer, we asked President López Obrado: What has to happen for him to give us an answer?” he added.

In addition to the Mexican capital, journalists protested against the murder of Sánchez Iñiguez, in the cities of Oaxaca, Guadalajara, Aguascalientes, and Ciudad Juárez.

The lifeless body of Sánchez Iñiguez was found on Saturday, July 9, in the town of Huachines, near the town of El Ahuacate, in the municipality of Tepic.

The organization Article 19 reported that it had documented the disappearance of Sánchez Íñiguez, according to information published by the outlet where he worked, and that his whereabouts had been unknown since the night of last Wednesday, July 5.

According to La Jornada, the reporter’s wife, Cecilia López, reported to the Nayarit Prosecutor’s Office that the journalist was not at home and that unknown persons had taken him along with some work materials such as his computer, his cell phone, a disk hard, as well as its accreditation of the medium.

Meanwhile, the State Prosecutor’s Office reported, also on Saturday, the damage suffered by three journalists who disappeared in the region during the past week, with a balance of one reporter murdered by Sánchez Iñiguez; one disappeared, Osiris Maldonado de la Paz, and one found alive, Jonathan Lora Ramírez.

Organizations defending freedom of expression pointed out that the 59-year-old correspondent would be the fourth journalist murdered so far in 2023. Of these four cases, in two, it has been confirmed that his death occurred due to his journalistic work and the others two are still documented.

In 2022, Mexico was listed as the most dangerous “country at peace” for the press, concentrating 20% ​​of the murders of journalists in the world, with 13 cases, according to the organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

According to the organization Article 19, a total of 160 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 2000 in possible connection with their work.

Of that total, 47 murders were registered during the term of the previous president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), and 40 during the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who assumed power on December 1, 2018. (c) EFE Agency