Rare Victory for Persecuted Journalist Highlights Mexico’s Press Freedom Crisis David Agren - The Guardian
go to original April 30, 2017

Mexican journalist Pedro Canche shows headlines containing false accusations against him (David Agren)

Pedro Canché, an indigenous journalist and activist in the southern Mexico state of Quintana Roo, had a hunch the local authorities were closing in on him for his coverage of angry protests over rising water rates in local Mayan communities.

So he filmed a video criticizing the intensely image-conscious state governor, Roberto Borge, and uploaded it to YouTube in August 2014. Just a few days later, police pulled Canché from his car and threw him in prison on charges that he had sabotaged a local waterworks.

The charges were eventually thrown out after nine months as a judge ruled no damage had been caused, and Canché had no relationship with the protest ringleaders.

The National Human Rights Commission later ordered the state government to publicly apologize to Canché and pay compensation, but Borge refused.

Last week, a new state administration apologized to Canché – who took the opportunity to highlight Mexico’s ongoing crisis of press freedom, and the unpunished murders of scores of journalists.

“Who will ask for public apologies for the 104 journalists killed [since 2006]? Canché asked. “The Mexican state owes them and their family an enormous debt.”

Canché became a cause célèbre in Quintana Roo and across Mexico as yet another symbol of the country’s struggle for a free press.

His is one of the few positive stories: four journalists have been murdered in Mexico in 2017, including Miroslava Breach, who covered organized crime and drug cartels and was shot dead in March as she drove her son to school in the northern city of Chihuahua. Norte, the Ciudad Juárez newspaper she wrote for, decided to close after her murder, citing journalist safety.

Journalists in Quintana Roo – a state popular with tourists visiting Cancún and Playa del Carmen – complain that the harassment against them came from politicians, who control the press through agreements to provide newspapers with advertising, but allow the government to control their editorial line.

Read the rest at The Guardian

Related: Mexico’s National Anti-Corruption Commission, Established in March 2014, Is Still Without a Head Prosecutor (Mexico News Daily)

Related: In Mexico, ‘It’s Easy to Kill a Journalist’ (The New York Times)

Related: Mexico Press Freedom: Journalists Live Between Fear and Bribes (Mexico Voices)

Related: National Rights Commission Calls for End of Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists in Mexico (Prensa Latina)

Related: Veracruz, Mexico is LatAm's Epicenter of Violence Against Journalists (InSight Crime)

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