Drug gangs silence journalists

DRUG traffickers are applying a policy of terror against journalists who fail to follow their wishes, with threats and brutal killings silencing the press in many parts of Mexico.

In the past five years “the power of drug traffickers has reduced a large part of the nation’s journalism to silence”, said Raul Omar Martinez, president of the Buendia Foundation on journalism.

Last week, the dismembered bodies of three photographers and a news company employee were found, wrapped in plastic bags, in a canal in the metropolitan area of Veracruz, a port city on the Gulf of Mexico.

Several days earlier the Veracruz state correspondent of the national weekly news magazine Proceso was found strangled in her home. Relatives of the photographers say they were killed after being summoned to a meeting.

Journalists in Veracruz started being summoned by suspected drug gangs after the killing of local reporter Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz in July 2011, according to a local journalist who declined to be named. Sometimes they are called in when gangs wish to give them messages about what they may or may not publish.

Other times, armed men summon journalists and beat several of them in front of their colleagues for refusing to obey their orders.

The state of Veracruz has become a battleground between the powerful Sinaloa drug gang of Mexico’s most wanted man, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, and the brutal Zetas, a group founded by elite commandos who deserted in the 1990s. Last year a new group arrived linked to the Sinaloa Cartel known as the New Generation or Matazetas – the Zeta Killers.

Another Veracruz reporter explained the difficulty: “A police commander that was your source [for] a few months later becomes a Zeta, and calls you up with information.”

Veracruz state is now one of the 10 most dangerous places in the world to work as a journalist. Since the start of 2011, eight media workers have been killed there.

In September 2010 a local newspaper published an editorial directly addressing drug gangs.

“What do you want from us?” it said. “What do you want us to publish or not publish, so we know what to adhere to?” Days later President Felipe Calderon announced a plan to protect journalists, and last week Mexico’s Congress approved a law protecting journalists on risky assignments. The threats and killings however show no sign of abating.

Some 79 journalists have been killed and 14 have gone missing since 2000, according to a national human rights body. — SAPA-AFP