Media rights activists voiced concern on Wednesday for 3 Mexican journalists feared to have been kidnapped two weeks in the past in an space managed by drug traffickers. Jesus Pintor Alegre, Fernando Moreno Villegas and Alan Garcia Aguilar, who labored for the news web site Escenario Calentano, disappeared on December 27 in Guerrero state.
In a video posted by unknown individuals on social media, two of the lacking journalists seem chained hand and foot. One the journalists says they’re “paying the consequences” for his or her reporting within the violent southern area.
The space the place the journalists went lacking is “very difficult, very complex, controlled almost 100 percent by the Familia Michoacana” drug cartel, Reporters Without Borders (RFS) consultant Balbina Flores instructed AFP.
RSF, the Committee to Protect Journalists and fellow rights group Article 19 made a joint attraction for the authorities to “find the journalists immediately,” in addition to to offer safety to relations and different media staff within the space.
The Guerrero State Human Rights Commission additionally issued a press release demanding that authorities launch an investigation.
Mexico is taken into account one of many world’s most harmful locations to work as a journalist. Since 2000, greater than 150 journalists have been murdered in Mexico, in line with RSF.
Last month one of many nation’s best-known tv news presenters stated he had survived an obvious assassination try in Mexico City. Ciro Gomez Leyva stated two folks on a motorcycle shot at him whereas he was touring in his armored car, however he was unhurt.
Police Chief Omar Garcia Harfuch stated 11 folks had been detained in reference to the assault on a car pushed by the journalist.
The little-known gang behind the assault dealt in homicide, extorting cash from businessmen and street-level drug dealing on town’s tough east aspect, officers stated. Authorities didn’t clarify why they believed such a small-time gang had tried to kill one among Mexico’s most outstanding journalists.
Gómez Leyva escaped shaken however unhurt — saved by his SUV’s bullet-proofing.
In raids and searches that led to the detentions, police discovered a cap with the letters CJNG, the initials of the hyper-violent Jalisco New Generation Cartel, however Garcia Harfuch stated that did not essentially imply the cartel was concerned.
“It is very frequent in Mexico City for criminal gangs to use names — Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco Cartel — just to communicate a link with them, without meaning they are part” of the cartels, he stated. “As in other arrests and searches, they have the initials of any number of cartels.”
A prime lieutenant of the Jalisco cartel threatened one other journalist earlier in 2022, which was the deadliest yr in at the least three many years for Mexican journalists and media staff, with at the least 15 slayings. Reporters Without Borders stated at the least 10 of the journalists had been killed due to their work.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.