The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) condemned this Monday the “smear campaign” of the president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obradoragainst journalists in that country and considered that “this type of attack from the top of power encourages violence against the press.”
(Read: Without punishment or consequences, the murders of journalists in Mexico)
In a statement, the organization, based in Miami (Florida, USA), urged López Obrador to “immediately suspend the attacks and insults” to communicators.
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According to the hemispheric organization, the most recent case of discredit involves the journalist Carlos Loret de Mola, a communicator “critical of the president” who works in radio, television and national and international print media. “Publicly and mockingly, López Obrador revealed the alleged income of Loret de Mola”details the statement.
Loret de Mola made a report at the end of January on the expensive house in which a son of the Mexican president lived for a time in Houston, Texas, he adds.
The residence was then owned by an executive of the Baker Hughes oil services company, which has million-dollar contracts with the state-owned company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
The president of the IAPA, Jorge Canahuati, condemned “the stigmatizing attitude, discredit and disqualification on the part of the president López Obrador against journalists and media”.
Canahuati stressed that “this abusive practice from the Executive Power” is “extremely dangerous,” a practice that “endangers the safety of those who carry out investigative and critical journalism that can make them uncomfortable.”
Carlos Jornet, president of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, pointed out, for his part, that “The case of Loret Mola is an example of the president’s vengeful stance”who “used confidential information from tax data to attack the journalist.”
Canahuati and Jornet called on President López Obrador to “immediately suspend this harmful practice, precisely in a country where violence continues to be the greatest threat to press freedom.”
In a letter sent to the president of Mexico on February 4, both directors stated that “denigrating the press from the top of power is not a dialectical game… even less so in dark hours like those that Mexico is experiencing due to this wave of violence,” the statement added.
Last Thursday, reporter Heber López was shot dead inside his recording studio in the southern state of Oaxaca, becoming the sixth Mexican journalist killed so far this year, according to a count by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Mobilizations for the most recent murders in Mexico
In Oaxaca with the death of Heber there are already 11 crimes against journalists and none have been clarified, more than 300 attacks against the union and no one has been prosecuted and no one has been sentenced
Journalists from the Mexican state of Oaxaca (south) demonstrated this Monday, second time in five days, in the homonymous capital of the state to protest the murder of his colleague Heber López Vásquez, which occurred last Thursday, and the escalation of violence against the union in the country.
López Vásquez, who was director of the Noticias Web portal, is the sixth journalist assassinated so far this year in Mexico, according to a count by the organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
The demonstration had as its meeting point the esplanade of the Santo Domingo Guzmán temple, one of the busiest and most emblematic places in Oaxaca, where journalists carried out graffiti with the phrase ¡Ya Basta! to demand the murder of López Vásquez.
The voice of the journalist Soledad Jarquín joined the protest, who during the 2018 electoral process lost her daughter, the photographer María del Sol, during an armed attack directed at the candidate Pamela Terán in the city of Juchitán, Oaxaca.
“They don’t see us, they want us to be quiet, it’s good that all of you are here today and we’re going to yell at those in power.”Not one more journalist murdered, not one more journalist!’ Stopthey injure the entire social fabric,” the journalist explained.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE
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