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Mexico’s authorities has lashed out on the “corruption, lies and hypocrisy” of the European parliament after its members urged its populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to rein in his media-bashing rhetoric after the murders of at the least six Mexican journalists.
Mexico’s press corps has been plunged into mourning this 12 months by a succession of killings concentrating on media employees in what was already one of many world’s most harmful international locations for journalists.
On Thursday greater than 600 MEPs overwhelmingly backed a decision condemning the murders and voicing concern over López Obrador’s use of populist rhetoric “to denigrate and intimidate impartial journalists, media house owners and activists”.
Such behaviour was contributing to “an environment of relentless unrest in the direction of impartial journalists”, the MEPs claimed, calling for “concrete, immediate and efficient” steps to halt violence in opposition to human rights defenders and journalists.
The decision seems to have infuriated López Obrador who – like his fellow regional populists Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro – is infamous for hectoring journalists and bristles at questioning from the press.
In a peculiar and cantankerous declaration, the Mexican authorities hit again, telling the European parliament: “Don’t forget that we’re now not anybody’s colony. Mexico is a free, impartial, and sovereign nation.
“If we had been within the scenario you describe in your pamphlet, our president wouldn’t be supported by 66% of residents,” added the assertion, calling MEPs the “sheep” of the “reactionary coup-mongers” allegedly making an attempt to derail López Obrador’s authorities.
On Friday morning López Obrador, or Amlo as he’s recognized, continued the offensive, blaming the “slanderous” European decision on conservative politicians “with a colonialist mindset”.
Mexico’s president, who stated he had helped compose the pronouncement, additionally appeared to minimize the latest killings of Mexican journalists, two of whom had been shot lifeless outdoors their properties.
“Regrettably, about 5,000 Mexicans have been murdered within the first two and a half months of this 12 months – and of those 5,000, 5 had been journalists,” the 68-year-old nationalist advised his each day morning press convention.
Amlo’s posture sparked bewilderment and anger. “Scandalous, demented, shameful,” tweeted Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s former ambassador to the US, evaluating the federal government assertion to the type of invective often related to diplomats from authoritarian regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua or Cuba.
“What a pitiful assertion,” wrote Denise Dresser, a political analyst and author. “It belittles the federal government. It belittles the nation.”
Amlo has repeatedly focused journalists throughout the first half of his six-year time period. The place Trump and Brazil’s far-right president Bolsonaro rail in opposition to the “faux information” or “rubbish” media, Mexico’s chief calls critics “sell-out” members of the “prensa fifí” (snot-nosed press).
Final 12 months Amlo started internet hosting a section of his morning press briefing referred to as “Quién es quién en las mentiras” (“The Who’s Who of Lies”), to reveal supposed “faux information” journalists.
Nonetheless, in latest months Amlo has intensified his assaults so as, some suspect, to distract from awkward allegations that his son had lived in a luxurious Houston mansion owned by a former worker at a US oil providers firm that had executed tens of tens of millions of {dollars} of enterprise with Mexico’s state oil large, Pemex.
Amlo hit again, publicly revealing the alleged wage of Carlos Loret de Mola, one of many journalists behind the claims – personal particulars many imagine had been illegally acquired from tax authorities.
The Mexican president’s stance has drawn rising worldwide criticism, with the Washington Submit lately slamming Amlo’s “brazen try to discredit and intimidate” Loret de Mola and denouncing the latest killings.
“The escalating violence is a stain on Mexico’s democratic document,” the newspaper’s editorial board stated final month, urging the Biden administration to face up for the free press.
Requested about such criticism, Amlo laughed.
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