Missing journalist's body found in Mexico's Michoacan state

[Judi Lynn]

2 hours ago

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The body of a Mexican radio journalist was found more than a month after his disappearance, authorities in the state of Michoacan said.

Fidel Ávila Gómez had disappeared Nov. 29, 2019 after leaving Huetamo, Michoacan for an event in the city of Altamirano, Guerrero on the border of the two states, according to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission. The commission said in a statement late Wednesday that he had been taken by armed men and it called on authorities to investigate if it was tied to his journalistic work.

Ávila was a host and manager of the radio station “La Ke Buena” in Huetamo. The human rights commission said his body was found along the San Lucas-Huetamo highway in Michoacan on Tuesday. The Michoacan state prosecutor’s office confirmed via Twitter that Ávila had been found.

Multiple criminal organizations operate in the region.

The Michoacan Reporters Association demanded authorities do more to protect them. It said journalists in the state in recent years had faced growing physical and verbal aggression without consequences for the aggressors.

https://apnews.com/670d5f179e5e9a81e3fe6fd1c3e8eadf

(Short article, no more at link.)



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Google translation:

The body of an announcer disappeared in December in Michoacán found lifeless
Fidel Ávila Gómez was found with gunshot wounds. At least 154 journalists have been killed in the country since 2000
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CARLOS SALINAS
Mexico 9 JAN 2020 - 12:44 EST



The driver and radio entrepreneur Fidel Ávila Gómez became the first communicator killed in Mexico in 2020, after the prosecution of the Mexican State of Michoacán - located in the west of the country - reported Wednesday that his body was found in an area rural with bullet wounds. Local authorities reported that they have initiated investigations to clarify the death of Ávila Gómez, in a country where journalism is a high-risk profession , with 154 journalists killed since 2000, according to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH).


The Prosecutor's Office of Michoacán said that the communicator had been reported missing by his relatives on December 2, and that he was last seen on November 29, when Ávila Gómez left the town of Huetano to attend an event in a municipality in the Guerrero State, located in the southwest of Mexico. Ávila Gómez, 46, as well as an announcer, was the manager of the local radio station La Ke Buena . The CNDH condemned the homicide and demanded that the authorities carry out an exhaustive investigation "with special attention to the possible relationship with their work in the radio medium so that there is no impunity."

The CNDH informed that on December 3, it requested the General Secretariat of Government and the Prosecutor General of the State of Guerrero “the implementation of precautionary measures, so that the corresponding and suitable actions for the search and location” of Ávila were carried out Gomez

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries to practice journalism . The CNDH registers 154 reporters killed since 2000, while the Article 19 organization has documented 24 reporters who have remained missing in the US since 2003. A report published last year by this body denounces that the six years of the government of former President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) were the deadliest for journalists, with 47 reporters killed.

Last year there were 544 attacks against the press, in addition there are 790 journalists and human rights defenders who are under threat of deathin Mexico for doing his job. “The country that Peña Nieto left is the most dangerous to practice journalism in the continent. The climate of fear caused by these crimes and human rights violations, which are committed with total impunity - and in most cases with the participation of the authorities - is excessive and the number of voices and stories that have been silenced by the fear constitutes losses impossible to calculate, ”warns the organization. "The violence has penetrated the newsrooms and has become a way of life for journalists, causing fear and self-censorship," they add from the agency, which also recalls that in Mexico "various locations have become silenced areas due to the penetration of criminal organizations. "

One of the major concerns of organizations that defend human rights in Mexico is the vulnerability with which reporters exercise their profession, but also the impunity that predominates in most murders of reporters . One of the most prominent cases is that of journalist Javier Valdez, considered the great chronicler of drug trafficking in the State of Sinaloa , who was killed in May 2017 in broad daylight in Culiacán, the state capital, after some men They will intercept your vehicle. The crime remains unpunished and last year the Rapporteurship for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expressed concern for "the slow investigation and prosecution of the murder of the Mexican journalist."

https://elpais.com/internacional/2020/01/09/mexico/1578584928_472802.html

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