For attacks against journalists, more than 1,500 inquiries opened since 2012: Article 19

Activists and journalists called on the authorities to take action in light of the impunity that exists for crimes against journalists, as well as the attacks on the union that have been on the rise under the current federal administration.

Within the framework of the Second National Meeting of Journalists, held at UNAM, Pedro Cárdenas Casillas, coordinator of Documentation and Follow-up of Article 19 Cases, stated that during the first semester of 2022 there was a record of 631 attacks against journalists.

“On average, every 14 hours, a journalist is the victim of a violation of their rights, of some limitation to their journalistic work due to their editorial line or attacks and much worse crimes such as displacements, disappearances and murders,” he lamented.

Cárdenas Casillas explained that from 2012, until October of this year, there was a record of 1,575 inquiries in the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Attention to Crimes committed against Journalists, with only 32 sentences and 37 reparation agreements.

It concluded that although the six-year term of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa continues as the one with the most murders of journalists, in the current government the high figures are alarming.

For her part, Sara Lidia Mendiola Landeros, executive director of Civic Proposal, commented that 95% of crimes against journalists go unpunished, and that in the case of disappearances the percentage is 100.

On the other hand, he said that in recent years the legal processes that the authorities have filed against journalists have increased, this as a way to silence and censor journalistic work that does not favor them.

Mendiola Landeros expressed that in many states of the Mexican Republic there are still figures, such as defamation, that are misused to silence journalistic work.

The coordinator of Article 19 commented that, in 2015, only one complaint of this type had been filed, but the previous year there were already 39 and throughout 2022 12 more have been filed.

No advocacy bodies

Jan Albert Hootsen, representative of Mexico for the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, affirmed that, although in theory the 32 states of the country should have institutions and prosecutors specializing in the protection of journalism workers, the reality is that only the half have these institutions.

He also argued that the fact that Alejandro Encinas comments that there are more journalists protected by the Protection Mechanism shows that violence in the country against the union has been increasing.

For her part, Balbina Flores, a representative of Reporters Without Borders, commented that the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador does not recognize or do justice for cases of violence that arose years ago. She said that they have only accepted the murder of 62 journalists and three disappearances.

politica@eleconomista.mx