Press under siege in Mexico: two journalists shot dead in Veracruz

The massacre of journalists gives no respite in Mexico.

Just four days after the murder of reporter Luis Enrique Ramírez, in Culiacán (Sinaloa), the director of the weekly newspaper

Yessenia Mollinedo, and camerawoman Johana García were shot this Monday in Veracruz, when they were parked in front of a grocery store. .

With them, there are already 11 journalists killed so far this year in the country, which has become the most dangerous in the world for the press.

Around 3:00 p.m., on Benito Juárez Street, the Veracruz Public Security Secretariat reported the attack on the journalists.

Even this small municipality in the south of the state, which is identified by the press as an area of ​​strong insecurity, the security forces have been deployed to try to locate the aggressors, so far without success.

The State Attorney General's Office reports that an investigation folder was started, due to the unfortunate events in which the director of the El Veraz portal, Yessenia Mollinedo Falconi, and the reporter Sheila Johana García Olivera, in the municipality of Cosoleacaque, lost their lives.

– FGE Veracruz (@FGE_Veracruz) May 9, 2022

With these two murders, there are seven reporters who have died violently in Veracruz in the Cuitláhuac García Administration.

“Let it be clear to those who do not want to understand it, in Veracruz there are no longer any complicities nor will these attacks be tolerated by anyone,” the governor of Veracruz has written on his Twitter account.

And he added: “We will find the perpetrators of this crime, there will be justice and there will be no impunity as we have said and done in other cases.

The Government of Veracruz is no longer ignorant or complicit, we are going after them.”

Claudia Martínez, from

newspaper , a Xalapa news portal, told EL PAÍS: "The situation is terrible in the state, we have a serious problem with insecurity and the government does nothing."

Martínez, who is covered by the journalists' protection mechanism, acknowledges being outraged at a situation that is already "unsustainable": "We cannot do our job without being killed."

José Luis Gamboa, stabbed to death on January 10 in Puerto de Veracruz, was the first reporter killed this year.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) identifies Mexico as the country with the highest number of cases in total impunity since the registry began.

Impunity for any kind of murder exceeds 90%.

In the case of journalists, the organization Article 19, a Mexican organization in defense of freedom of expression, speaks of 99% of unsolved crimes, some of which are deliberately delayed in the Prosecutor's Office for years.

The director of this group, Leopoldo Maldonado, assures that they are already following up on the bloody murder of Mollinedo and García.

In 2021, Mexico was the sixth country with the most unsolved crimes;

the five ahead are at war.

"The conclusion after three years of the López Obrador government is that not only has he not been able to solve the dozens of murders of journalists, defenders and activists, but he has done very little to prevent them," Jan Albert told EL PAÍS - Hoosten.

In most cases there are no sentences or trials.

In only some there are detainees.

From 2000 to 2021, Article 19 has documented 145 murders of journalists in Mexico.

The alarming climate against the press in Mexico has reached beyond the country's borders: both the United States and the European Parliament have called on the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to take action.

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