Mexico Hits 90% Impunity Rate for Crimes Against Journalists

Mexico's national watchdog for human rights has condemned federal authorities for allowing 90 percent of the murders of journalists to go unpunished.

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Analyzing 176 investigations opened into media-related crimes in recent years, Head of the National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH) Luis Raul Gonzalez Perez said only 10 percent of cases resulted in a conviction.

"Impunity prevails because authorities did not fulfill their duty of preventing, investigating and punishing," he said at the Second Regional Forum on Freedom of Speech and Role of Journalists, which took place in the city of Merida Saturday.

Perez warned that the high levels of impunity served to encourage more crimes against journalists: if they are not addressed, he cautioned, such murders could trigger social collapse" and "spread fear in society."

The killings "seek to silence freedom of speech" and foment self-censorship, serving as a warning to other journalists to seek exile, Perez said.

According to the CNDH, 77 attacks against media professionals have been registered so far this year. A total of 98 was recorded in 2016; 80 in 2015, and 94 in 2014. The rate of murder has steadily increased, meanwhile: from four in 2000; 12 in 2015 and 13 in 2016, to 10 so far this year.

Mexico was recently ranked first in Latin America on the 2017 Global Impunity Index, with many crimes going unpunished. The press freedom organization revealed that perpetrators of such crimes get away with murder 99.7 percent of the time.

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Activists and media professionals in Mexico – along with international organizations including the United Nations, Reporters without Borders and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights – have urged the state to take more active measures to protect journalists.

On Oct. 31, Reporters Without Borders launched the “Forbidden Stories” projectto further investigations into the cases of journalists who have been killed or imprisoned.

The website features the work of well-known reporter Javier Valdez, who was killed in Mexico in May while covering drug-related violence in the state of Sinaloa. The region is home to the notorious Sinaloa cartel previously run by now-jailed drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

In an interview with teleSUR last year, Valdez explained that the relationship between the media and drug-trafficking in Mexico is a complicated one: journalists can become cartel victims, but many are also accomplices.

Sometimes, said Valdez, reporters have no choice but to become the eyes and ears of drug-traffickers in the newsroom or risk death. Others are paid to inform on colleagues, becoming accomplices in the forced disappearances or even murders of other journalists.

In some regions, such as Tamaulipas, drug-traffickers impose the editorial line on the media. Journalists are forced to report a fictitious "silence," rather than reflecting the reality on the streets.

Meanwhile, in Guatemala, police arrested journalist Jerson Antonio Xitumul Morales as he was reporting local fishermen's protests against the Guatemalan Nickel firm for Prensa Comunitaria in the eastern Izabal province last week. 

He stands accused of incitement to commit crimes, threats, and illegal detention related to his alleged participation in protests on May 4.