A Mexican reporter was in a program to protect journalists. He was still killed
A Mexican journalist who was enrolled in a government protection program after chronicling corruption has been gunned down, becoming at least the ninth journalist killed in Mexico this year. (August 24, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter h
A Mexican journalist who was enrolled in a government protection program after chronicling corruption has been gunned down, becoming at least the ninth journalist killed in Mexico this year.
Candido Rios Vazquez, a crime reporter in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, was shot Tuesday along with two other men, according to the State Commission for Attention and Protection of Journalists.
According to the commission, Rios was enrolled in the federal government’s program for protection of journalists and human rights workers, a program created in 2012 to shield journalists who often face violence in a country that is one of the world’s deadliest places to report the news.The program provides emergency evacuations, police protection and, in some cases, even a panic button that summons authorities.
Rios, who lived in the town of Hueyapan de Ocampo in central Veracruz and worked for the local newspaper Diario de Acayucán, had been threatened repeatedly since 2012 by one of the town’s former mayors, his editor told the Associated Press.
The editor, Cecilio Perez Cortes, said Ríos had finished work for the day about 3 p.m. and was on his way home. Ríos had stopped alongside the highway in Hueyapan to speak with a former police inspector he knew, Perez said. The former police inspector was also killed in the attack, along with another man, who was not immediately identified.
Investigators have not named any suspects.
Ríos had accused local authorities of corruption in the past.
In a video uploaded on his Facebook page Aug. 13, he denounced an alleged corruption network in Hueyapan de Ocampo, accusing several officials of illegally using government money and cheating in past elections.
In the video, which lasts almost 15 minutes, the journalist said he had been arrested in the past for having told the truth, and suggested that a journalist’s pen is no match for the arms carried by those who hope to silence him.
“They riddle us with bullets, knowing that our weapons do not fire bullets, our weapons shoot truths,” he said.
Still, Ríos said he felt compelled to uncover the truth.
“I speak to my people,” he said. “It is my duty.”
Article 19, a nonprofit that advocates for media protection in Mexico, recorded 426 threats or attacks against the news media last year, including beatings and torture. Journalists are more likely to face threats from government officials than criminal groups, according to the National Human Rights Commission.
Human rights advocates complain that public officials don’t want to strengthen protections for journalists because a free and transparent press often isn’t in their best interest. Earlier this year, the officials who run the program that Ríos was enrolled in warned that funding was set to run out.
Opposition leaders have seized on the issue.
On Tuesday, Margarita Zavala, a possible candidate for the right-leaning National Action Party in next year’s presidential election, tweeted her outrage. “Another attempt on the freedom of the press,” she wrote. “Enough!”
Ríos’ killing comes on the heels of a string of slayings of high-profile journalists.
They include Javier Valdez, an internationally recognized investigative reporter who was slain May 15 in Sinaloa, and Miroslava Breach, a veteran investigative reporter who was shot to death while driving her child March 23 in Chihuahua. Breach’s death prompted the publisher of El Norte, the Juarez newspaper where she worked, to shut down the publication. In a letter to readers, the publisher said he could no longer guarantee the safety of his staff.
In May, several prominent Mexican news outlets went dark for a day to protest the slayings of journalists across the country.
The killings have prompted international outcry, with a large group of foreign journalists penning a letter to President Enrique Pena Nieto pleading for more protections for reporters. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a worldwide group, held high-profile talks with Pena Nieto earlier this year. U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson has made press freedom one of her top issues, bringing U.S. journalists with experience in war zones to coach local reporters on self-protection and security protocols. A few months ago, Jacobson traveled to Veracruz, a particularly dangerous state for journalists, to talk with local reporters about how the United States could support them.
Despite the outcry, not a single suspect has been tried in any of this year’s killings.
Killings in Mexico expand well beyond journalists, as authorities struggle to contain violence between warring criminal groups. The country is on track to record more homicides in 2017 than in any year in the last two decades.
There were 931 homicides reported between January and July of this year in Veracruz, up from 537 during the same period last year.
The Associated Press and Cecilia Sanchez in the Los Angeles Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.
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