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Freedom of Expression

Mexico

PRINCIPLE 9 OF THE DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION (Murder, kidnapping, intimidation of and/or threats to social communicators, as well as the material destruction of communications media)

 25.              This year, the Office of the Special Rapporteur received information on violent acts against social communicators, especially in the interior. Particularly worrisome are reports on murders of journalists, some possibly in retaliation for their coverage of organized crime. In such cases, the Office of the Special Rapporteur was informed that the federal authorities had undertaken investigations and had placed great value on the condemnation of such acts at the highest levels of the Government. The Office of the Special Rapporteur made public its concern in a press release of September 2, 2004.

 26.              On March 19, 2004, the editorial director of the daily El Mañana, of Nuevo Laredo (state of Tamaulipas), Roberto Javier Mora García, was assassinated. Mora, 44 years of age, had published various articles on organized crime. Two of his neighbors, identified as Mario Medina Vásquez, a U.S. citizen, and Hiram Olivero Ortíz, were detained on March 26, 2004.[1] The Office of the Special Rapporteur received expressions of concern from civil society organizations regarding the seriousness of the investigation in this case.[2]

 27.              On June 22, 2004, the editor of the weekly Zeta, Francisco Javier Ortíz Franco, was murdered in Tijuana, Baja California.[3] Ortíz was a co-founder and editorial writer of Zeta, where he wrote about drug-trafficking and corruption.[4] On June 29, 2004, the Office of the Attorney General of Baja California appointed a special judge to investigate the homicide. Nonetheless, on August 18, the federal authorities took over the case because of its possible relationship with organized crime.[5]

 28.              On August 31, 2004, columnist Francisco Arratia Saldierna, 55 years of age, died of a heart attack after having been brutally beaten in the city of Matamoros, by the border with the United States. Arratia published his columns in four newspapers in the state of Tamaulipas: El Imparcial and El Regional, in Matamoros, and Mercurio and El Cinco, in Ciudad Victoria. He also published an Internet publication, En Línea Directa, he was a schoolteacher, and he had a used car business. Arratia wrote about corruption, organized crime, and education. According to the reports received by the Office of the Special Rapporteur, he had been tortured prior to being pushed out of a vehicle. On September 24, Tamaulipas police arrested Raúl Castelán Cruz, in the city of Matamoros, who confessed to having participated in Arratia’s murder, saying the crime was motivated by his columns. On September 30, the federal authorities took over the investigation due to a possible nexus between the assassination and organized crime.[6]

 29.              On January 12, 2004, Irene Medrano Villanueva, of the newspaper El Sol, of Culiacán (state of Sinaloa), received a death threat by telephone. The next day, two individuals damaged her vehicle. The intimidation by telephone recurred on January 22.[7] Medrano had published articles on child prostitution; threats against her have been reported since then.[8]

 30.              On July 12, 2004, unknown persons tried to set afire the home of Gerardo Ponce de León Moreno, columnist with the weekly Crítica, in Hermosillo, Sonora. The incident did not cause major damages to the house. Ponce found an anonymous note with a threat related to his work. Ponce has made comments on matters involving local politics, security, and corruption.[9]

 31.              On May 22, 2004, alleged police agents attacked the director of Diario Tribuna, Martín Serrano Herrera. The newspaper, in the city of Jalapa, had published articles that tied public officials in Veracruz to alleged acts of corruption and enrichment.[10]

 32.              On May 23, 2004, Maximiliano Cortez Zepeda, of Radio Variedades, and Mario Solís Espinoza and Edgar Badilio Mena, of the Diario de Colima, were attacked by about 20 youths, apparently led by a relative of a former governor of the state of Colima. The journalists were pursued by the youths and beaten repeatedly, apparently in retaliation for their work as journalists.[11]  The State Director of Public Security, Fernando Díaz Cendejas, admitted that the attack occurred in front of police agents, but denied that he prohibited them from stopping it.[12]

33.              In June, Álvaro Delgado, a journalist with the magazine Proceso, received threats by email[13] allegedly related to his investigations into the infiltration of extreme right-wing groups in power.[14]

34.              On September 9 and 11, the main door and two windows of the facilities of the newspaper Frontera de Tijuana[15] were destroyed by weapons fire.

35.              On November 1, in the state of Tabasco, Víctor Manuel Ulín Fernández, who publishes the column Sin Remitente, in the daily La Verdad del Sureste, was kidnapped for several hours by two individuals who beat him, threatened him because of the information he had put out, and simulated his execution. Ulín has taken a position against the local governor.[16]

36.              On November 17, 2004, in the state of Sinaloa, politician Saúl Rubio Ayala was celebrating his victory in the election for local deputy when he denounced the stories that appeared in the newspaper El Debate, set fire to some copies, and insulted its two journalists Resina Ávila and Alonso Sánchez, who were there, and called on his followers to assault them. Avila and Sánchez had to be protected by the police in order to leave.[17]

PRINCIPLES 10 AND 11 OF THE DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION (Use of defamation laws by public officials and desacato laws)

37.              On May 26, 2004, in the state of Chiapas, a stiffening of the penalty for those guilty of crimes of defamation or libel entered into force, to up to nine years prison and a fine of up to 1,000 times the minimum daily wage. These penalties reflect an amendment to the Criminal Code of Chiapas, which was passed February 17, 2004. Before the change, a person guilty of defamation or slander was subject to a sanction of imprisonment of two to five years and a fine of 75 times the minimum daily wage. With the change, the prison term is from three to nine years, and the fine ranges from 100 to 1,000 times the minimum daily wage. Other provisions include the obligation of the owners of communications media, independent of whether they have committed violations, to print the complete judgment, in the same space or time where the crime for which the trial took place was disseminated.[18]

PROGRESS

38.              On March 19, 2004, the Government of Baja California joined the special group reviewing the murder of journalist Héctor Félix Miranda, which occurred in 1988. It joined as the result of the agreements reached in a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in October 2003. The group was constituted on March 15, 2004, by the government of Mexico and the Inter-American Press Association, to clear up the crime that took Miranda’s life as well as the crime in which Víctor Manuel Oropeza, also a journalist, was killed.[19]

39.              On March 30, 2004, the Supreme Court and the Federal Judicial Council adopted the regulation that allows for public review of judicial proceedings and resolutions adopted in litigation.[20] The regulation includes posting the rulings on the Internet. The regulation was issued as part of compliance with the Federal Law on Transparency and Access to Public Information, promulgated in June 2002.

40.              The Office of the Special Rapporteur has received information on progress in the negotiations for the Government to continue the process of awarding frequencies to community radio stations. In December, the Government of Mexico issued five permits for indigenous community radio stations. In its 2003 report, the Office of the Special Rapporteur had described the complaints it had received over the delays in the process of assigning frequencies to community radio stations. Despite some difficulties during the year in the dialogue process that got under way between the government and representatives of these media, the Office of the Special Rapporteur considers it auspicious that, as it has been informed,[21] progress is taking place in the negotiations to facilitate the operation of these radio stations, and towards the consideration of more democratic criteria in assigning radio frequencies, as indicated by Principle 12 of the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression. The Office of the Special Rapporteur urges the State to continue the negotiation process and to take into account the preliminary observations made by the Special Rapporteur upon the conclusion of his official visit in August 2003, and taken up by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in its assessment of the human rights situation in Mexico.

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