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A fourth journalist has been killed in Mexico in a month, drawing condemnation from freedom-of-the press teams.
Roberto Toledo, a 55-year-old lawyer who collaborated with the information outlet Monitor Michoacán, was gunned down within the western state of Michoacán, within the municipality of Zitácuaro, by three males in a parking space by the legislation workplace the place he labored.
His dying was confirmed by the director of Monitor Michoacán, Armando Linares, in a video shared on social media.
“Considered one of our colleagues misplaced his life as a result of three folks got here and shot him in a vile means, in a cowardly means,” Mr Linares stated within the video, clearly distraught. “To our colleague’s household I say that we aren’t going to depart issues like this and that we’re going to take them to their closing penalties.”
Mr Linares stated staff at Monitor Michoacán had been the topic of threats by way of WhatsApp and Messenger.
“We’re not armed, we don’t carry weapons. Our solely technique of protection are a pen, a pencil, a pocket book,” he stated.
Mexico’s authorities spokesperson, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, initially condemned the killing on Twitter, saying: “We are going to work along with the state and municipal authorities to make clear the case. We won’t permit impunity. We defend freedom of expression and the proper to data.” A subsequent tweet from his account stated that Roberto Toledo labored as an assistant in a legislation agency, not as a journalist.
In an interview with Mexico’s Milenio, the mayor of Zitácuaro, Antonio Orihuela, additionally condemned the assault however stated Toledo wasn’t a journalist.
Monitor Michoacán’s director stated Toledo lined the state authorities and produced video tales for the Internet. “He saved a low profile, given the threats we had acquired,” he stated in an interview with Milenio.
Three different journalists and media employees have been killed to this point this yr: reporter José Luis Gamboa Arenas was killed in Veracruz on 10 January; photographer Alfonso Margarito Martínez Esquivel was killed exterior his house in Tijuana on 17 January; and reporter Lourdes Maldonado López was shot inside a automobile in Tijuana on 23 January.
The dying of Toledo on 31 January “underscores the extremely harmful state of affairs that journalists all throughout Mexico are having to deal with as they’re making an attempt to go about doing their each day work”, stated Natalie Southwick, program coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean for the Committee to Shield Journalists (CPJ). The group condemned the assault on social media and urged Mexican authorities to research.
Mexico ranked because the world’s deadliest nation for journalists in 2020, in line with a report by the CPJ. Along with these killed, 15 journalists stay lacking in Mexico, in line with CPJ knowledge.
The Washington Put up
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