Reporters Sans Frontières

Published on 16 July 2009

Reporters Without Borders today called on federal and state authorities to do their utmost to find the killers of two journalists: Martín Javier Miranda Avilés, a reporter on the daily Panorama and correspondent for news agency Quadratin, found dead at his home in Zitacuaro, Michoacán state in the south-east on 12 July and Ernesto Montañez Valdivia, an editor on the local newspaper Enfoque del Sol de Chihuahua, shot dead in Ciudad Juárez in the north of the country on 14 July.

“These murders took place in the two regions that are the most mired in the war of the cartels and the federal drive against drug trafficking. Against this background the killing of a journalist goes beyond targeted revenge against an individual and is a way of terrorising the entire press and citizens”, the worldwide press freedom organisation said.

“We offer our deepest sympathy to the families of the victims and their colleagues and urge a thorough investigation into both cases, the circumstances of which and motives are not yet known. The connection with their work must therefore be taken into account,” added the organisation which sent a delegation to the country at the start of July and will release a report in September.

Montañez Valdivia was ambushed by armed men while driving his car accompanied by his 17-year-old son, who was badly wounded in the neck and taken to hospital with critical injuries. The car carried a sticker “Press 2007” and the name of the magazine, El Enfoque del Sol de Chihuahua. The national daily Milenio said there had been 325 such killings in Chihuahua state in the month of June alone.

Miranda Avilés was found dead at his home with two knife wounds in his back. The motives for the murder were unclear but his colleagues said he had recently received threats, while at the same time believing it was most likely a ‘crime of passion’. The journalist only very occasionally covered crime, but the management of Panorama did not rule out some kind of reprisals against the newspaper. News vendors were attacked two weeks earlier while selling an edition of the paper that carried a report of the arrest of a police officer in possession of guns and drugs.

The killing of Miranda Avilés came on the same day as the capture of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, one of the godfathers of “The Family”, the feared Michoacán cartel. This arrest was followed by an upsurge in violence, including an attack on a police station in Zitacuaro.