Jorge Ochoa Martinez on Friday became the third journalist to be assassinated in Mexico in 21 days.

According to IPI Death Watch figures, at least 11 journalists were killed because of their job in Mexico in 2009.

Ochoa Martinez was the editor and owner of two publications, El Sol de la Costa and El Oportuno, which covered local issues, according to news reports.

Ochoa Martinez, 55, was shot in the face while leaving a party for a local politician in the town of Ayutla de los Libres. He was hit with several bullets from a .38 calibre weapon. The authorities have not yet confirmed that the journalist was killed in connection with his work, and say they have few leads, according to news reports.

On 7 January this year, Valentín Valdés Espinosa, a reporter with the Mexican daily Zócalo Saltillo in the country’s northeastern state of Coahuila, was kidnapped, tortured and shot several times. His body was found outside a local motel along with a note, addressed to “everyone,” warning that “this will happen to anybody who does not understand.” On 16 January, the body of Jose Luis Romero, the director of Radio Linea was found in a black bag near Los Mochis city in Sinaloa state.

“The murder of Ochoa Martinez is a barbaric act committed by individuals who have no respect for life,” said IPI Director David Dadge. “It is despicable that the murderers – in a cruel perversion of a journalist role – are using the bodies of murdered journalists to deliver messages.”

Ochoa Martinez’s murder comes a week after an editor in Baja California Sur filed a complaint with the state representative of the Attorney General’s office, after he was allegedly abducted, beaten and threatened with death by the local mayor and the mayor’s cohorts. Armando Suarez Martinez, editor of Puerto Viejo magazine, reported that he was insulted by the Loreto mayor in the town hall, and was punched by the mayor’s secretary, according to a report by the Center for Journalism and Public Ethics in Mexico.

Afterwards, the mayor and other public officials, including the city finance secretary, allegedly had Suarez Martinez abducted.  The journalist was forced into a car belonging to the Ministry of Public Safety and Transit and taken outside of town, where the mayor and others joined him. There, the mayor and his cohorts fired a pistol at the journalists feet and threatened to have him buried alive. The mayor said that if he told the public of these threats, he would have him killed.  Hours later, Suarez Martinez was dropped off at a hotel in Loreto, while his abductors took 300 copies of the magazine to prevent its distribution.