Communicators and activists hold the first hearing of the People’s Tribunal on the Murder of Journalists


Emphasizing that impunity is the key factor for the constant violence against journalists and defenders in our country, communicators and activists carried out the first hearing of the Tribunal de los Pueblos on the Murder of Journalists, against Mexico.

The project organized by Free Press Unlimited, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, and which is part of the Permanent People’s Tribunal, aims to hold governments “accountable for their actions.”

During its first day of session on the case of Veracruz journalist Miguel Ángel López Velasco (Milo Vela), assassinated on June 20, 2011, Jan-Albert Hootsen, Committee for the Protection of Journalists, maintained that this court not only seeks to reveal the factors that as a whole lead to the murder of journalists in the country, but rather tries to make visible and accessible the multiple failures by the Mexican State, not only in preventing violence but also in allowing murders and disappearances to go unpunished.

In this context, it was said that the “chilling” data show that for more than a decade Mexico has ranked first in the murders of journalists and defenders in the Western Hemisphere, in addition to being the country with the highest number of disappeared journalists to date. world level.

While so far this year, Mexico is the second country with the highest number of murders of journalists, only below Ukraine, a country in the midst of war.

“Impunity sometimes seems to be something abstract, but the reality is that it is a series of events, a chronology of failures by the Mexican State that allows the crime to never be solved,” added Jan-Albert Hootsen.

For her part, the prosecutor assigned by the TPP, Almudena Bernabeu, pointed out that after 20 years in which more than 150 journalists have been murdered in the country, it is a sign that the journalist has become a nuisance, someone who you can manipulate and treat like a token of change, to levels unthinkable.

Therefore, he said, this exercise seeks to establish the causes of this violence and how to combat impunity.

“’What are we becoming when the first to be eliminated is the one who gives us the pulse of what is happening in society? The importance of this court goes beyond documenting crimes against journalists.´ ”, he expressed.

Meanwhile, Mira Chowdhury of Free Press Unlimited said that “we hope that this court will contribute to making recommendations to improve the national and international system for the protection of journalists.”

RSF’s Emmanuel Colombié maintained that through the case of Milo Vela, “we want to show that the authorities have failed in their mission to protect journalists. It is a symbol of structural impunity’”.

During her participation, the journalist Lucía Lagunes explained that the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists has a lack of effectiveness that has to do with the little coordination between the government institutions that are part of it. “State authorities do not feel obliged to abide by the recommendations issued by the mechanism.”

Laura Borbolla Moreno, former FEADLE Prosecutor, acknowledged that the Prosecutor’s Office lacks resources, in addition to capacity, in the 4 years in the institution.

“Public policies at the federal level as states are not enough. I believe that the government has made efforts but not enough, otherwise we would not be before this Court”, he said. Laura Borbolla Moreno.

Patricia Mayorga, a journalist for Proceso, expressed that official advertising is used as a bargaining chip. “When the media is controlled through official advertising, the problem is not so much what they force you to say, but what they force you to keep silent.”

While Anabel Hernández, investigative journalist, stressed that “the murder of journalists is not the cause. It is the consequence. It is just a reflection of a very structural problem: corruption, ineffectiveness of institutions, how power works.”

Thus, for more than eight hours, journalists and activists reported their feelings about the situation of journalists in the country. The hearings were convened by the Permanent People’s Tribunal (TPP), an internationally recognized court that seeks to make visible the conditions of impunity through a trial where the authorities’ lack of due diligence is evidenced.

The People’s Court for the Murder of Journalists deals with cases that have escalated to the international level and in this case, homicides committed against communicators in Syria and Sri Lanka will also be aired.

The hearings will have a prosecutor and a judge in the case who will judge the role of Mexico in the persecution of the murderers of journalists, but with the possibility that the Mexican authorities may defend themselves.

The accusation against the Mexican state was even sent to the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as well as to Veracruz authorities, without obtaining a response.

In Veracruz, they rule out that the murder of José Luis Gamboa is due to journalism

The State Commission for the Attention and Protection of Journalists (Ceapp) rules out that the murder of Veracruz journalist José Luis Gamboa is related to the victim’s journalistic activity.

Through a statement and after the capture of Eduardo “N” as allegedly responsible for the crime, he insists that the main line of investigation, focused on the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE), has another bias and that it is known that the investigation folder is no longer located in the Office of the Specialized Prosecutor for Crimes against Freedom of Expression of Veracruz, as it is not within its jurisdiction.

José Luis Gamboa was murdered in the port of Veracruz after being stabbed on January 10 of this year.

Protection Mechanism Agreement in Michoacán

The Undersecretary of Human Rights, Population and Migration of the Segob, Alejandro Encinas, acknowledged that the levels of violence that have been experienced in the first three months of this year oblige all levels of government to rethink actions to strengthen reaction measures against violence and, in turn, preventive measures in terms of protection for journalists.

Leading the signing of the coordination and cooperation agreement between the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists and the government of Michoacán, the undersecretary recognized that the government has to assume that this task requires the support of other institutions, since 45% of the attacks against journalists come from municipal law enforcement authorities – municipal police with association with criminal groups; “The second challenge is to deepen the investigative work by the Attorney General’s Office and the states to combat impunity,” he stressed.



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