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THE INTER AMERICAN PRESS ASSOCIATION (IAPA) condemned on Wednesday that 18 journalists and media workers have already been murdered in Mexico this year, with a new victim this week: Fredid Román, columnist for the online news program La Realidad de Guerrero.
The Miami-based organization criticized “the lack of political will of the authorities to resolve the problem of violence faced by the press in the country”.
Román, 60, was gunned down Monday afternoon outside his home in the city of Chilpancingo, the state capital.
Hours before his murder he published on Facebook his latest column, “State Crime without blaming the boss,” about the 43 students who disappeared in Ayotzinapa in 2014, the IAPA said.
“We regret this new tragedy that makes Mexico the most dangerous country for the practice of journalism in the world,” IAPA President Jorge Canahuati said.
“We ask the Guerrero Prosecutor’s Office not to rule out his journalistic activity as one of the motives”, Canahuati added.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of Information, Carlos Jornet, lamented the frequency of murders of journalists in Mexico.
He criticized the fact that “firm actions have not been taken to counteract this scourge” due to “an obvious lack of political will”.
This is the most violent year for the Mexican press since 1987, when the IAPA began to record murders of journalists.
Editor’s note: the quotes featured in this article were originally published in Spanish, translated to English and then edited for publication.
