MEXICO CITY ( Associated Press) – Another journalist was found dead in northern Mexico on Thursday, the ninth media person killed in the country so far this year.
Prosecutors in the northern state of Sinaloa said the body of Luis Enrique Ramírez Ramos was found on a dirt road near the state capital, Culiacan.
Ramirez Ramos, 59, was the ninth reporter or photographer killed in Mexico this year, making the country the most dangerous place in the world for the press outside war zones.
Ramírez Ramos’s news website, “Fuentes Fidedignas,” or ‘trusted source’, said he had previously been abducted near his home.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said it mourned the killing and “called on the authorities to urgently investigate the act.”
Ramírez Ramos is listed as the “founding director” of the website, which has reported relatively little on the drug cartel violence affecting Sinaloa, which is home to the cartel of the same name.
However, Fuentes Fidignas reports on local political disputes, which are often a risky topic for journalists in provincial Mexico.
But the website also includes a section on “good news” about Sinaloa, and its mission statement states, “Just as we condemn blame and corruption, we also cover the hardworking, hardworking and generous nature.” What our good people give to the state.”
Francisco Chiquete, a fellow reporter at Culiacán, said “Luis Enrique Ramírez was a very professional and capable journalist” and noted that he had expressed apprehensions about retribution for his work by 2015. However, Chiquet said he was not aware of any recent threats against his colleague.
Drug cartels have been blamed for many murders of journalists in Mexico in recent years, and journalists in the most violent cities, such as Culiacán, often avoid cartel subjects for their own safety.
But in a 2015 interview with MVS radio station after the murder of fellow reporter Humberto Milan, Ramírez Ramos said, “I don’t write about drugs, I speak neither good nor bad about drugs. Humberto Milan didn’t either, and that wasn’t enough to keep him alive and working.
“What’s up? Humberto Milan and I only write about politicians, and now it turns out that we can’t even write about politicians, so what are the journalists in Sinaloa going to write about? They said that said the time
Mexico’s state and federal government have been criticized for neither preventing nor adequately investigating the killings.
While President Andres Manuel López Obrador has promised a “zero punishment” program to investigate the killings, on Thursday the head of that program listed only six killings of journalists this year, even though eight have occurred.
And the president continues his relentless verbal attacks on journalists whose stories he dislikes, calling them “conservatives” and “mercenaries” and using information from supporters – and apparently tax agencies – to those journalists. To publicize the income of those he dislikes.
Press groups say journalists’ daily criticism of López Obrador makes him more vulnerable to violence.
In February, the Inter American Press Association called on the president to “immediately suspend attacks and insults, because such attacks by those in power encourage violence against the press.”
And in March, the European Union approved a resolution asking the “authorities, and especially the supreme ones, to refrain from releasing any communication that could stigmatize human rights defenders, journalists and media personnel, can heighten the atmosphere against them or distort their lines of inquiry.”
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