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International group says Mexico is Latin America's 'deadliest' country for journalists in 2005


ASSOCIATED PRESS

1:41 p.m. November 8, 2005

MEXICO CITY – Mexico became Latin America's most dangerous country in which to be a journalist in 2005, the international watchdog group Reporters Without Borders said Tuesday.
The organization issued a statement expressing concern about the safety of journalists in Mexico a day after police in the southern state of Oaxaca announced that a radio news reporter had been shot and critically wounded by unidentified assailants.

In northern Mexico alone this year, six journalists have been killed and a seventh is still missing, according to Mexican newspaper editors who met in August to address the issue.

"Mexico has in 2005 become Latin America's deadliest country for journalists," the Reporters Without Borders statement said.

In September, Mexican President Vicente Fox said he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate freedom of expression crimes, including attacks against journalists.

Fox's office and the Mexican congress also have indicated that they would study stronger penalties for crimes against journalists, at the suggestion of the Inter-American Press Association.

But Reporters Without Borders said their actions have not gone far enough.

"The government's increased awareness of the problem has not produced the hoped-for results," the group's statement said. "Investigations are rarely successful and impunity remains the rule. It is essential that the special prosecutor's office promised by the federal government for press cases is put in place and its investigators given real resources."

There was no immediate response from Mexican officials Tuesday.

Among the journalists who have been victims of violence this year: Dolores Guadalupe Garcia, a radio reporter in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, who died of multiple gunshot wounds inflicted by unidentified assailants in April 2005; and Raul Gibb Guerrero, a newspaper editor also killed in April 2005, in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.

Daily newspaper reporter Jose Reyes was found stabbed to death in the western state of Jalisco in October, while daily newspaper reporter Julio Cesar Perez was wounded in an exchange of fire between armed groups during the same month in the northern state of Tamaulipas, Reporters Without Borders said. Alfredo Jimenez, a daily newspaper crime reporter, has been missing since April from the northwestern state of Sonora.

On Sunday, Benjamin Fernandez, a news reporter with the station Radio Hit in Oaxaca, was shot and killed by unidentified assailants, police said.

The attack against Fernandez has made action by government officials "more urgent than ever", Reporters Without Borders said.

But there was some doubt about whether Fernandez actually was working as a journalist at the time of his death.

The manager of the radio station, David Jimenez, said Fernandez hadn't worked there for 15 years.