IAPA condemns the murder of the fourth journalist in Mexico so far this year

“We hope that, beyond words, the state will take concrete and practical action to prevent this and previous murders from going unpunished.”

(MIAMI, FLORIDA – IAPA).- The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) vehemently condemned the fourth murder of a journalist in Mexico this year. The organization criticized the inability of the authorities to bring the culprits to justice and punish them.

Three men shot Roberto Toledo, a journalist with the news portal “Monitor Michoacán,” as he was leaving his office on Monday in the city of Zitácuaro, Michoacán state. Toledo, 65, was taken to a hospital, where he died. The journalist covered state government information and produced video news reports. He was also a collaborator of a law firm that shared offices with Monitor Michoacán, local media reported.

Jorge Canahuati, president of the IAPA, said, “Just as Mexican journalists have raised their voices to demand an end to the violence, we hope that, beyond words, the state will take concrete and practical action to prevent this and previous murders from going unpunished.”

Canahuati, executive president of Grupo Opsa, from Honduras, added, “We will be attentive to the materialization of the promise made by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador last week to improve the protection mechanism for journalists.”

In a video broadcast on social media, the portal’s general director, Armando Linares, said that the Monitor Michoacán team had been receiving death threats for more than a year. “Exhibiting corruptions of corrupt governments today led to the death of one of our colleagues.”

▶ #VIDEO | El director general de Monitor Michoacán dio a conocer el asesinato del periodista Roberto Toledo, quien ya había denunciado amenazas y se había acogido a la protección federal. https://t.co/Vrtuo36bWk pic.twitter.com/NOGSrIhcPA

— La Silla Rota (@lasillarota) January 31, 2022

The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Carlos Jornet, editor of the Argentine newspaper La Voz del Interior, emphasized, “Expressions of solidarity and demands for the resolution of these cases do not seem to be taken seriously. And we fear that this impunity will generate more violence against Mexican journalists and will further condition the already compromised freedom of expression”.

Canahuati and Jornet considered that “impunity in these crimes has become a privilege of immunity for the violent.”

In the first month of this year, these journalists were murdered in Mexico: Lourdes Maldonado, on January 23, and Margarito Martínez, on January 17, both in Tijuana, Baja California, and José Luis Gamboa Arenas, on January 10, in Veracruz, state of the same name.

IAPA is a non-profit organization dedicated to defending and promoting freedom of the press and expression in the Americas. It comprises more than 1,300 publications from the western hemisphere; and is based in Miami, Florida, United States.

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