Press Freedom

Mexico May 19, 2006

H.E. Vicente Quesada Fox
President
Residencia Official de los Pinos
Col. San Miguel Chapultepec
11850 Mexico , DF
Mexico
Fax: (011.52.5) 515-5729

Your Excellency:

More than a year has gone by since the disappearance of Alfredo Jiménez Mota of the newspaper, El Imparcial of Sonora.  Your special prosecutor for crimes committed against journalists, David Vega Vera, reports he has nothing new to say about the investigation of this case. He also had nothing new to say about six other cases of crimes committed against journalists in Mexico that he is investigating.  Thus far in 2006 — that is, in just four months — 11 more cases of attacks on journalists have been reported.  Three were assassinated, three were attacked physically and five were threatened.

For obvious reasons, the plight of journalists in Mexico has caught the world’s attention — at the United Nations, at the Organization of American States, at the Inter-American Press Association and at several organizations devoted to defending the freedom of the press.  The latter includes the Overseas Press Club of America.

Mota’s murder has become a symbol to our colleagues in the Mexican press, perhaps because he was a young man who continued to report on drug traffickers and organized gangs — the very people responsible for the deaths of so many.  Mota had the courage to continue his work despite its
obvious risks.  He disappeared and his body has not been found.  His disappearance ignited a settling of accounts among Sonoran criminals that
resulted in 74 executions, according to the Phoenix Project study by a panel of Mexican journalists sponsored by the Inter-American Press Association.

The majority of Mexican journalists appear to have been cowed into silence. In many cities the acts of organized crimes are now barely mentioned in the
press, despite their brutality. You know as well as anyone, Your Excellency, that those who attack the press attack the basis of law and democracy in Mexico.

Your government must find a way to break through the feeling of impunity
enjoyed by the killers of journalists like Alfredo Jiménez Mota.  We can not
tell you how that should be done.  But it must be done.

Respectfully yours,
Jeremy Main
Kevin McDermott
Freedom of the Press Committee

cc:

Carlos Alberto de Icaza Gonzalez
Ambassador of Mexico to the U.S.A.
Embassy of Mexico
1911  Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC  20006
Fax: (202) 728-1698

Ambassador Enrique Beriuga
Permanent Representative
Permanent Mission of Mexico to the United Nations
2  United Nations Plaza, 28th floor
New York , NY 10017
Fax: (212) 688-8862

Hon. Antonio O. Garza, Jr.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico
Embassy of the United States of America
P.O. Box 9000
Brownsville , TX 78520
Fax: (011.52.5) 5080-2005

Olga María del Carmen Sánchez C.
Ministra, Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación
Pino Súarez, No.2, Colonia Centro
México, D.F.
México
Fax: (011.52.5) 522-0152

Genaro David Góngora Pimentel
Ministro Presidente
Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación
Pino Súarez, No.2, Colonia Centro
México, D.F.
México
Fax: (011.52.5) 522-0152

Patricia Mercado Sanchez
Editor
El Economista
Mexico DF
Mexico
pmercado@economista.com.mx

Leonardo Valero
Editor – International
La Reforma
Mexico , DF
Mexico
leonardo,valero@reforma

Mr. Alberto Ibargüen
Miami Herald Publishing Company
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132

Juan Francisco Ealy Ortiz
El Universal of Mexico City
Bucareli N° 8 Col. Centro
Delegación Cuauhtémoc C.P. 06040
Mexico

Sr. Ramón Darío Cantú Deándar
El Maòana
Mexico, D.F.
Mexico
Fax: (011.52.5) 714-8797

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carmen_Lira_Saade&action=edit Carmen Lira Saade
La Jornada
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/nuevo/publicidad.php

Av. Cuauhtémoc 1236 Col.
Santa Cruz Atoyac
México D.F. C.P. 03310
México

Lcda. Rosario Robles
Presidenta, Partido de la Revolución Democrática
Huatusco # 37 5o. piso
Col. Roma Sur
México, D.F.
Mexico
Fax:  (011.52.5) 207-1200