Hague tribunal aims to probe journalist murders

International

-DW News

In his last column for the Mexican regional newspaper Notiver, Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco wrote about femicide, nepotism and contaminated drinking water.

Lopez Velasco, who was the deputy director of the Veracruz-based media outlet and used the pen name “Milo Vera,” said the authorities had promised to deal with the problems. “And if not,” he wrote, “we will remind them here.”

It never came to that. A few hours later, the 55-year-old was dead.

In the early hours of June 20, 2011, his murderers came to the journalist’s home under the cover of darkness while he was sleeping, smashed the front door and shot him dead, along with his wife, Agustina, and their youngest son, Miseal. They fired more than 400 bullets.

The police, stationed just one block away, did not even dispatch a patrol car. Ten years later, prosecutors have yet to find the perpetrators and a clear motive. Lopez Velasco’s two older children have gone into exile in fear of their lives.

‘Over 90% get away with murder’

The murderers destroyed a family and got rid of yet another critical voice in Mexico. “In over 90% of cases, they can count on getting away with it,” said Balbina Flores, Mexico’s representative for Reporters Without Borders.

Now, however, the case is going to court, at least symbolically: The Permanent People’s Tribunal will hold an open hearing on November 2 on violations of press freedom across the world.

The murders of three journalists in particular will be on the agenda: those of Lopez Velasco, Lasantha Wickrematunge from Sri Lanka and Nabil al-Sharbaji from Syria. The tribunal does not have the power to convict anybody, but it can at least raise awareness and exert pressure on governments to protect journalists.

‘Hold states accountable for their failures’

The tribunal was instigated by Reporters Without Borders, Free Press Unlimited (FPU) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). “This public forum is a chance to hold states accountable for their failures to bring perpetrators to account,” said Natalie Southwick, CPJ’s Latin America and the Caribbean program coordinator.

“These efforts are especially important in Latin America, where the vast majority of killers of journalists never face justice, and particularly in Mexico, the hemisphere’s deadliest country for the press.”

It is one of a series of actions with which journalists around the world hope to draw attention to the dangers both to themselves and to press freedom. Another example is the nonprofit Forbidden Stories project, which supports journalists who continue with the investigations begun by murdered, imprisoned or threatened colleagues.

The aim is to show those who order or carry out the murders that reprisals against journalists are not an effective way to stop unpleasant truths being revealed. Its slogan: Killing the journalist won’t kill the story.

Velasco’s death a warning shot

The death of Lopez Velasco, an experienced and respected journalist who knew the Mexican state of Veracruz like the back of his hand, was a warning shot. His murder was the “prelude to a whole series of journalists being murdered” in the state, said Balbina Flores.

One of those journalists was Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz, a colleague of Lopez Velasco from Notiver, who had criticized the authorities’ slow progress in investigating the murder shortly before she herself was killed in July 2011. Another was Regina Martinez Perez, the correspondent for the prestigious national weekly magazine Proceso, who was killed in 2012.

At the time, Veracruz was the most dangerous state in Mexico for journalists. The governor was Javier Duarte de Ochoa of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). During his term of office from 2010 to 2016, 17 journalists were murdered; three disappeared without a trace. Duarte kept a blacklist of journalists who he, and his influential predecessor and mentor Fidel Herrera Beltran, disapproved of; those journalists were spied on.

After Lopez Velasco was killed, regional state prosecutors, who answered to Duarte, put forward the theory that a local drug lord, El Naca, was involved. They then let the case drop.

In 2018, Duarte was charged with corruption and sentenced to nine years in jail.

Protection mechanism for journalists too slow

In 2012, under pressure from human rights activists, the Mexican Congress passed a law to protect endangered journalists and activists. According to Flores of Reporters Without Borders, over 1,500 Mexicans, including 500 journalists, have had recourse to it.

But she said the protective mechanism was still too bureaucratic and slow. “Under the law, the authorities are supposed to respond to a call for help within 12 hours by providing a panic button, regular police patrols, bodyguards or, in the most extreme cases, a safe house. In practice, however, this can take two weeks,” she said.

When Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador became president in December 2018, he promised dramatic changes to security policy, but little has changed. According to official figures, 43 journalists and 69 activists have been killed since he came to office.

“In most cases, there had been death threats beforehand,” said Flores. “Of the seven journalists killed this year, two had requested protection measures, but these came too late.”

She said that a reform of the law, which was drafted in cooperation with journalist organizations, was currently on hold in Congress and that the budget for the protection agency had not been increased. “The issue is not high on the political agenda,” she said.

Source: DW