Reporters Without Borders refers each year to the murders of journalists in Mexico in its reports. Targeted killings never happen by chance. They target investigative journalists. And the culprits are never caught. Sponsors are often linked to drug traffickers, or even corrupt local authorities. But a mobilization is taking shape in particular to fight against impunity.
This Wednesday, November 2 was a date chosen to denounce the impunity of crimes committed against journalists in Mexico. Reporters Without Borders recalls that 68 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2016 for reasons directly related to their profession. The year 2022, which has 14 victims, is a record year, and had started very badly with the assassination of two journalists in six days in Tijuana: Margarito Martinez and Lourdes Maldonado.
On the border between the United States and Mexico, the city of Tijuana started the year 2022 in blood. Six days apart, two journalists, Margarito Martínez and Lourdes Maldonado, were murdered. Two murders that illustrate the dangers that Mexican journalists face in the exercise of their profession.
In 2019, journalist Lourdes Maldonado, threatened by a local elected official from the ruling party, had asked the Mexican president for help. “I fear for my lifeshe said. This is an influential person in politics, this is your candidate for governor of Baja California, Jaime Bonilla.” Two years later, on January 23, 2022, Lourdes Maldonado was shot dead outside her home. Margarito Martínez was dedicated to covering the daily murders in the streets of Tijuana. He too was shot dead outside his home. The ongoing investigation identifies the leader of a local criminal group as sponsors.
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More than a third of journalists killed worldwide have been killed in Mexico this year. More than 500 journalists benefit from a protection system put in place by the Ministry of the Interior. For some of them, it is sometimes exfiltration from the neighborhood, and often also self-censorship. The reporter wallows in silence and the information is muzzled. Information often on facts of corruption or connection between police, criminals and local politics. And basically, what is most worrying is the prevailing climate of impunity. In 9 out of 10 cases, the culprits are not arrested.
Emmanuelle Steels works for Release, Radio France, RTBF, RTS and Radio Canada, in Mexico City. In this context, she was not spared from intimidation, because of an investigation, carried out in 2009, on the underside of the Florence Cassez affair, arrested with her companion who was to become an ex, since she was undertaking a move, in December 2005.
This arrest, for an indictment of kidnapping with forcible confinement and demand for ransom, had been broadcast live with television, with the release of hostages live. It will turn out, over time, that this arrest was only a staging. Florence Cassez and Israel Vallarta were arrested the day before, locked up, then taken to rooms on the Villarta ranch before discovering, appalled, the fake assault on the house, filmed by TV.
All the details of this Florence Cassez case resurface in the Netflix series dedicated to her, a documentary series Found Guilty, visible since late summer. And Emmanuelle Steels intervenes in this series, because of her deep knowledge of the case which she has been following since 2009. She even devoted a book to the subject in 2015, translated in France this year, This is not a kidnapping, published by Editions Fauves.
And for the first time since she has been in Mexico, Emmanuelle is the victim of intimidation messages. First insults on twitter, then “I hope you will be removed” or films sent to her, where she sees herself walking down the street, which means she is being followed, and the video poses an additional threat. For Emmanuelle, everything is linked with impunity. If the authors of this judicial-police orchestration (Florence Cassez affair) had been worried, they would not feel authorized today to threaten a journalist who wants to shed light on this affair.
This is the whole point of the mobilizations against the assassination of journalists. Mobilization of reporters around the world, but also in Mexico. The Mexican political class should also take up the subject, and stop discrediting the reporting profession. Let’s put an end to statements like those of the Mexican president 3 years ago: “If you follow the behavior of the media, said Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on October 31, 2019, you will realize that they do not act as representatives of citizens, but as representatives of certain interests!”.
There is still a little light on the front of Mexican justice. The first two murders of the year saw the investigations move forward, and it’s rare enough not to be underlined.“There will be no impunity, neither in the case of Margarito, nor in the case of Lourdes, said Ricardo Iván Carpio, Attorney General of Baja California. Several authors [exécutants] have been brought before the courts, and we are on the trail of the sponsors”