The International Press Institute (IPI) and the World Association of Newspapers (WAN-IFRA) today expressed concern for the whereabouts of a Mexican journalist reported missing this week by his daughters, and called on federal authorities to clarify the murky details surrounding his disappearance.

Six journalists have been killed in Mexico in 2012, including Milenio correspondent Victor Manuel Báez Chino, who was found dead last Thursday in Veracruz.

Mexico’s three leading presidential candidates, who will face election day next 1 July, have yet to respond to a joint IPI-WAN IFRA letter sent earlier this month, which asked the candidates to explain the measures they would take to end violence against journalists and to bring their attackers to justice.

El Punto Crítico photojournalist Federico Manuel García Contreras, based in Mexico City, was last seen on May 17 in Tanquián, San Luís Potosí state, where he had arrived on May 13 to report and conduct interviews related to reported levels of violence there, his daughters Marisol and África García said in interviews with Mexican media.

The next day, the daughters continued, García Contreras called to say that municipal police had denied him permission to carry out his work and that “a lot of bad people that he didn’t know were arriving.” According to news reports, García Contreras also told his partner, Xóchitl, on the phone that the local police commander threatened to come to Mexico City to “corroborate” that he was a journalist.

After learning that their father had not been seen at his guesthouse for more than a week, Marisol y África traveled with additional family members to Tanquián, where the commander, José Alberto Troas Pérez, contended that their father had been detained on May 18 for public drunkenness and taken back to the inn where he had been staying.

However, according to Proceso magazine, the doctor who examined García Contreras on the orders of the police commander told the two daughters their father had shown no signs of inebriation and had been examined by her on the 17th, not the 18th. Moreover, Proceso reported, the innkeeper maintained García Contreras had never been brought back to his room by the police. Following the innkeeper’s statement, the daughters told the magazine, the commander revised his story to say he had ordered García Contreras to be “left on a corner.”

IPI Press Freedom Manager Barbara Trionfi said: “We are troubled by the conflicting accounts surrounding the disappearance of Federico Manuel García Contreras, whose well-being is of paramount concern to us. There is absolutely no time for hesitation in this case – Mexican federal and state authorities act immediately to find Mr. García Contreras and ensure his safety.”

“Mexican media is facing a crisis of historic proportions”, said Rodrigo Bonilla, WAN-IFRA Press Freedom Missions Manager. “Every week, we hear of journalists who are threatened, kidnapped or killed. It is appalling to observe the authorities’ absolute impotence in facing this crisis. We are eager to hear from the three presidential candidates on how they plan to tackle the issue.”

As IPI reported earlier this week, a Coahuila crime journalist who had vanished with her two-year-old son on June 8, called in to a local radio station to report that the two were safe but under threat and in need of federal protection.