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Mexico Journalists Kidnapped as Drug Cartels Threaten Freedom of Speech
Mexican gang members took at least three journalists hostage this week in Durango state after the reporters investigated alleged links between prison officials and drug groups, the state attorney general’s office said.
The kidnappers haven’t yet demanded a monetary payoff, said Ruben Lopez, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, in a telephone interview. Officials are seeking to confirm whether a fourth missing reporter is among the group, he said.
The kidnappings show Mexico’s drug cartels are growing increasingly violent and forcing members of the media to practice self censorship for their own safety, according to Carlos Lauria, a spokesman for the Americas division of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
“This is yet another indication of the deep crisis that Mexico is going through in terms of freedom of expression,” he said today in a telephone interview from New York.
The three confirmed victims include two cameramen from television station Televisa, according to Lopez. Televisa spokesman Miguel Angel Zapata declined to comment.
Police found the vehicle of a third victim abandoned and charred from a fire, Lopez said.
The kidnappers demanded that the journalists’ employers air videos that aim to show ties between local police and the Zetas drug gang, according to news station Milenio. The videos aired this week on an early morning broadcast, the news organization said on its website.
Rising Kidnappings
Mexico has reported almost 25,000 deaths related to organized crime since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006. At least 30 journalists have been killed or disappeared in the period, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The government estimates violence shaves one percentage point from gross domestic product each year.
Kidnappings in Mexico rose to 1,059 in the first 10 months of 2009 from 323 in 2004, according to the latest report by the group Mexico United Against Crime, which cites data from the Ministry of Public Security. The federal government doesn’t regularly release kidnapping data.
The abducted journalists were in the region to investigate prison officials who may have let prisoners out to commit violent crimes, according to the state attorney general’s office.
Prisoners at the Gomez Palacio jail are suspected of gunning down 17 people at a party in northern Torreon, Coahuila state, with the consent of guards who lent them weapons, according to Ricardo Najera, spokesman for the federal attorney general’s office.
‘Settling the Score’
The jail is in the state of Durango, which shares a border with Coahuila, where the killings took place.
“The criminals committed the killings as a way of settling the score with members of rival organized crime gangs,” Najera said, according to an e-mailed statement. “The delinquents cowardly killed innocent civilians, only to later return to their cells.”
Gangs in Mexico have also targeted political figures. Ex- senator and former presidential candidate Diego Fernandez de Cevallos was reported missing May 15 from his ranch in the central state of Queretaro and has yet to be reported found.
Fernandez de Cevallos appeared blindfolded this week in photographs posted on Twitter and reported in Mexican media. The photos were accompanied by a message from his apparent kidnappers, who demand $50 million in ransom.
Business Impact
The leading candidate for governor in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, Rodolfo Torre, was gunned down last month less than a week before elections.
“There’s a climate of fear and intimidation that makes it very difficult to report on issues vital to the public,” said Lauria of the press rights group.
The impact of violence is the biggest threat to the Mexican economy, according to 57 percent of Mexican executives, up from 49 percent in March and 22 percent in December 2009, a survey published this month by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu showed.
The second-most cited concern was a U.S. economic slowdown, according to the June 7-29 poll of 381 Mexican business leaders.
The U.S. government has delivered only about 9 percent of the $1.6 billion in drug-war aid promised to Mexico through the 2008 Merida Initiative, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a July 21 report to Congress.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan J. Levin in Mexico City at Jlevin20@bloomberg.net
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