The International Press Institute (IPI) today called on Mexican authorities to secure the safety and release of a journalist kidnapped in the northern state of Sonora yesterday.
According to news reports, Marcos Avila García, who covers police and crime for El Regional de Sonora, was abducted by three armed assailants while waiting for his vehicle to be delivered at a car wash in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora. A lone witness has told police that the unidentified men asked Avila whether he was a journalist; when Avila answered affirmatively, he was forced into a blue sedan being driven by a fourth suspect.
IPI Executive Director Alison Bethel McKenzie said: “Sonora and Mexican federal authorities need to act immediately to locate and free Marcos Avila García, who appears to have been kidnapped solely because of his work as a journalist. While we recognise that the public safety challenge facing Mexico is enormous and complex, the Mexican government ultimately bears responsibility for the well being of all journalists working within its borders, including Mr. Avila.”
El Regional de Sonora and other media outlets reported yesterday that local, state, and federal authorities had launched a coordinated effort to find Avila and that Ciudad Obregón had been placed in lockdown. IPI is urging in particular the concerted involvement of the federal government in this and all cases involving crimes against journalists in Mexico, as officials at both local and state levels across the country have been suspected of ties to organised crime.
In a separate incident, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission said it was opening an investigation into last week’s attack on Marquesina Política editor Gerardo Ponce de León in Hermosillo, Sonora’s capital. On May 10, two unknown assailants entered Ponce de León’s office and badly beat the journalist’s face and arms with a pipe.
Both incidents come as a wave of violence against the media has swept through Mexico, where four journalists have been killed in the past 20 days. On April 29, investigative journalist Regina Martínez was found strangled and beaten to death in her home in the Veracruz state capital of Xalapa. Six days later, on World Press Freedom Day, the tortured and dismembered bodies of three photojournalists who covered police and crime were found dumped in a wastewater canal in Boca del Río, Veracruz state.
IPI today also condemned the murder of René Orta Salgado, a journalist who had taken leave to campaign for a presidential candidate in Mexico’s July 1 elections. Orta’s body was found Sunday in the trunk of his car in Cuernavaca, capital of Morelos state. Authorities later said the cause of death was stabbing wounds to the throat and stomach as well as asphyxiation from a handkerchief taped over the journalist’s face.
According to Mexico’s Proceso newsmagazine, Orta had worked as a police reporter in Cuernavaca for over 20 years, primarily with El Sol de Cuernavaca. In December, he left the latter paper to serve as Morelos state coordinator for a political action committee supporting Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, according to its Spanish acronym) candidate Enrique Peña Nieto.
