A fourth journalist gunned down without any government reaction to the slaughter

Evaristo Pacheco Solís, a 33-year-old reporter employed by the weekly Visión Informativa, has become the fourth journalist – or possibly the fifth – to be murdered in Mexico since the start of the year. Solis’s body was found beside a road near Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern state of Guerrero, on 12 March. He had been shot several times with a 25 calibre firearm. Jorge Ochoa Martínez, the editor of the daily El Sol de la Costa, was shot dead in a similar fashion in Guerrero six weeks ago. The Special Federal Attorney’s Office for Combating Violence against the Media (FEADP) has not obtained any significant result since its creation in February 2006 and the federal offensive against drug trafficking launched by President Felipe Calderón the following December has made the situation even more untenable for the media. Gustavo Salas Chávez, the prosecutor who recently took over at the head of the FEADP, has not responded to Reporters Without Borders’ questions about the way it works and the resources at its disposal. ________ 12.03.2010 - Two suspects arrested for journalist’s murder for unlikely reasons Bizarre explanations given by the Mexican justice system over the recent deaths of two journalists have done nothing to lift fears over impunity or remove the pressing need for protection for the press which is under very serious threat, Reporters Without Borders said. The Justice Ministry for the state of Guerrero yesterday publicly produced the two men suspected of ordering the murder of Jorge Ochoa Martínez, publisher and editor of the daily El Sol de la Costa and founder of the weekly El Oportuno, who was shot dead in Ayutla de los Libres, on 29 January 2010. Honorio Herrera Villanueva and David Bravo Jerónimo supposedly planned the journalist’s murder because he drove down a one-way street and refused to back up to let their vehicle pass. Incensed, the two men allegedly paid a taxi driver to kill the journalist, according to the authorities. “It was a chance, casual occurrence,” according to the ministry. The family of Jorge Ochoa has said that a link between the killing and his work as a journalist should not be ruled out, although this has apparently been ignored by the investigation. In the second case, Jorge Rábago Valdez, a staffer on Radio-Rey and Reporteros en la Red, died in unexplained circumstances in Reynosa on 2 March 2010. According to the justice ministry for the state of Tamaulipas, he suffered a “fainting fit” and went into a “diabetic coma”. However his colleagues say he was “abducted” and was “tortured”, before he died. ______ 01.02.2010 - Another journalist shot dead amid a wave of threats against media personnel A newspaper editor’s murder has brought the total of journalists killed in Mexico in the space of a month to three. Jorge Ochoa Martínez, the editor of the local daily El sol de la Costa and the weekly El Oportuno, was shot dead in Ayutla de los Libres, in the southern state of Guerrero, on 29 January. He was 55. According to the police, Ochoa was shot several times with 38 calibre firearm. The authorities have not so far suggested any motive but his family told Reporters Without Borders they did not rule out the possibility that he was killed in connection with his work. The press freedom organisation therefore urges the authority to actively explore this hypothesis. The family said it received several calls on the night of 29 January, including one from the police, saying Ochoa had been shot. One his sons told Reporters Without Borders: “I could not believe it. I thought it was a joke. I called my father several times but he did not pick up. Then I went to Ayutla and found his body.” Although Ochoa’s death confirms that Mexico continues to be the hemisphere’s most dangerous country for the media, the authorities are failing to respond adequately to a wave of threats against media personnel by presumed drug traffickers and, in some cases, by local officials. Juan Aparicio, the editor of El Observador, a magazine based in the southern state of Chiapas, was threatened by a member of the state’s border police, Pedro León Toro Peña, on 20 January while covering a raid on a house where a kidnapping had taken place. Armando Suárez, a reporter for Puerto Viejo, a magazine based in La Paz, in the northwestern state of Baja California, was threatened by Loreto mayor Yuan Yee Cunningham and was hit by local officials on 21 January. The torching of a car outside the studios of a radio station in Los Mochis, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, on 27 January was accompanied by a message that read: “This will happen to journalists. They are going to be burned. With best wishes, La Mochomera.” A total of 61 journalists have been murdered since 2000 and nine others have gone missing since 2003 in Mexico, which was ranked 137th out of 175 countries in the 2009 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.