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News > Latin America

Journalist Found Dead in Northern Mexico, Fifth Murdered in 2018

  • Finance journalist Alicia Diaz Gonzalez is the fifth journalist to be killed in 2018.

    Finance journalist Alicia Diaz Gonzalez is the fifth journalist to be killed in 2018. | Photo: @julioastillero

Published 25 May 2018
Opinion

According to the rights organization Article 19, 48 percent of reported acts of violence against journalists were perpetrated by state officials.

Alicia Diaz Gonzalez became the fifth Mexican journalist to be killed in 2018 Thursday after she succumbed to a series of injuries she received in a violent attack at her home in Monterrey, Mexico.

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The murder of the 52-year-old financial journalist signals the continuation of a disturbing trend of violence against journalist in the Central American country press rights observers have said. 

According to the Attorney General’s office “the victim, who it is known worked as a journalist in the area of finance and business, was found inside her house at around 10:00 a.m. by her children, who were resting on the second floor but didn't know the incident had taken place.”

An examination of her body revealed she sustained several puncture wounds to the neck according to local media sources, which explain her body was found facedown in a pool of blood, suggesting that she bleed to death.

Investigators have ruled out robbery as one of the possible motives that lead to her death since a search of her home showed no valuables were missing.

Mexico’s  National Commission for Human Rights has called on the government of the state of Nuevo Leon to protect Diaz’s family and urged to the Attorney General’s office to launch an investigation “to determine the responsibility for the crime and analyze the link to her work as a journalist.” 

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Ana Cristina Ruales, director of Article 19, an organization that works to improve rights of journalists, is pessimistic. “Today the majority of crimes committed against journalists remain unpunished, not only due to lack of sentencing but also because investigations are closed when they identify the material authors without reaching to the truth of the facts,” she told El Pais.

Before Gonzalez's murder, another journalist Juan Carlos Huerta was shot dead outside his home in Jalisco on May 15.

Some 44 journalists have been murdered during president Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year government, which marks one of the deadliest periods for Mexican journalists.

According to the rights organization Article 19, violence against journalists are not only linked to organized crime and drug trafficking but also to state officials, who have organized or participated in 48 percent of the1,986 reported acts of aggression.     

Mexico is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists along with Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines.

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