{"id":34619,"date":"2017-05-17T13:14:39","date_gmt":"2017-05-17T13:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/protesters-demand-justice-for-javier-valdez\/"},"modified":"2017-05-17T13:14:29","modified_gmt":"2017-05-17T13:14:29","slug":"protesters-demand-justice-for-javier-valdez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/protesters-demand-justice-for-javier-valdez\/","title":{"rendered":"Protesters demand justice for Javier Valdez killing"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Rights groups accuse Mexican authorities of failing to prosecute those who kill journalists covering drug gangs.}<\/p>\n

Media and rights groups have demanded the Mexican government catch the killers of the fifth and most high-profile journalist murdered this year in the country.<\/p>\n

Javier Valdez, 50, who was shot dead in broad daylight on Monday in northwestern Sinaloa state. The awarding-winning journalist was one of the most prominent reporters on Mexico’s deadly “drug war”.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the front pages of the country’s major newspapers carried pictures of Valdez as journalists demonstrated in the centre of the capital, Mexico City. <\/p>\n

President Enrique Pena Nieto said he had ordered “an investigation of this outrageous crime”. He vowed to defend press freedom, “fundamental for our democracy”.<\/p>\n

Press rights group Articulo 19 said that was the first time Pena Nieto had reacted publicly to one of the recent wave of journalists’ killings, which they consider a sign of rising pressure on the president.<\/p>\n

But the killing fanned a wave of anger at the authorities, with rights groups saying corrupt officials are preventing journalists’ killers from being punished.<\/p>\n

“How long will there be killings without pity and with impunity?” said Valdez’s own weekly publication, Riodoce.<\/p>\n

“Murderous impunity,” ran the headline of an editorial in La Jornada, the national daily for which Valdez worked as Sinaloa correspondent.<\/p>\n

Just hours after Valdez’s assassination on Monday, in Autlan, gunmen opened fire on Sonia Cordova, an executive at the Semanario Costeno weekly magazine, and her son.<\/p>\n

Cordova was wounded and taken to hospital and her adult son was killed in the attack, the state prosecutor’s office said.<\/p>\n

A state police source said her son, Jonathan Rodriguez Cordova, worked as a reporter at the family-run magazine, which publishes local news that includes some crime reporting, Reuters news agency reported.<\/p>\n

In a 2017 report titled “No Excuse”, journalist Adela Navarro Bello wrote for the New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists that “covering corruption in Mexico means living with impunity”.<\/p>\n

“Between 2006 and 2016, 21 journalists were murdered with complete impunity in Mexico, putting the country sixth on CPJ’s annual index that measures cases where perpetrators remain unpunished,” Bello wrote.<\/p>\n

“The system seems to be corrupt down to its very foundation; either that or it’s simply incapable of achieving justice.”<\/p>\n

Valdez was due to be cremated on Tuesday, his family said.<\/p>\n

Journalists’ unions said they planned demonstrations in homage to Valdez, including one outside government headquarters in Mexico City and one in his home town of Culiacan, where he was shot.<\/p>\n

Some media in Sinaloa canceled their Tuesday editions in protest.<\/p>\n

“This wave of violence shows the state of emergency in which Mexican journalists are living,” said Emmanuel Colombie, Latin American director of Reporters Without Borders.<\/p>\n

“The Mexican government must take action proportionate to the seriousness of the situation and strengthen protection for journalists as soon as possible.”<\/p>\n

Numerous media and human rights organisations including Amnesty International have called for an impartial investigation.<\/p>\n

They accused the authorities of failing to prosecute those who kill journalists covering the drug gangs in broad daylight, sometimes in front of their families.<\/p>\n

Articulo 19 says 105 journalists have been murdered and a further 23 have disappeared since 2000.<\/p>\n

Of those cases, 99.7 percent remain unsolved, meaning the culprits have gone unpunished, it says.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/figure>\n

Source:Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Rights groups accuse Mexican authorities of failing to prosecute those who kill journalists covering drug gangs.} Media and rights groups have demanded the Mexican government catch the killers of the fifth and most high-profile journalist murdered this year in the country. Javier Valdez, 50, who was shot dead in broad daylight on Monday in northwestern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[160],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-34619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-theophile-niyitegeka"],"bylines":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"contributors":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34619"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=34619"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=34619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}