As Mexico marks journalist Valdez’s murder, another colleague killed
CULIAC N, Mexico: A Mexican journalist was murdered Tuesday, the fourth of 2018, as the country mourned acclaimed reporter and writer Javier Valdez on the fi rst anniversary of his killing.
Juan Carlos Huerta was shot dead as he left his home in a suburb of Villahermosa, the capital of the southern state of Tabasco, the state government said.
The 45-year- old radio and television journalist had a wife and two children, according to Mexican media reports.
The latest killing in what has become one of the world’s deadliest countries for the press fueled further outrage as protesters took to the streets demanding justice over the murder of Valdez and more than 100 other journalists killed since 2000.
Valdez, the co- founder of the newspaper Riodoce and a longtime contributor to Agence France- Presse, was gunned down in broad daylight near his newspaper’s offices on May 15, 2017 in Culiacan, capital of the violent state of Sinaloa. The killing drew international condemnation.
Valdez, 50, was one of the most prominent chroniclers of Mexico’s deadly drug war in a state where notorious kingpin Joaquin 'El Chapo 'Guzman, now imprisoned in the United States, once reigned.
Protesters marked the first anniversary of his death with a series of marches around the country — the main one in Culiacan — calling on the authorities to punish those responsible and stop the wave of violence. — AFP