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Alert

IAPA calls for action against journalist's murderers

(IAPA/IFEX) - The following is a 28 August 2006 IAPA press release:

IAPA CALLS FOR ACTION AGAINST KILLERS OF JOURNALIST IN MEXICO

MIAMI, Florida (August 28, 2006) - In a new action in its hemisphere-wide awareness campaign aimed at bringing the murderers of journalists to justice, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today called on Mexico's President Vicente Fox to act to speed up the investigation into the death of news photographer Gregorio Rodríguez Hernández and bring to trial and convict those responsible.

Rodríguez worked for the newspaper El Debate in Mazatlán in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa. He was murdered as he was having dinner with his two children on November 28, 2004, apparently in reprisal for having photographed local police chiefs partying with drug traffickers. Although the alleged killers are in custody, they have not yet been convicted and sentenced, nor has a warrant been issued for the arrest of the person said to be the mastermind of the crime, a local drug baron.

In the last 18 years, a total of 298 journalists have been murdered in the Americas. Through ads run in more than 350 newspapers and magazines throughout the Western Hemisphere and spots aired in a similar number of radio broadcasts, the IAPA is inviting readers and listeners to go to its Web site http://www.impunidad.com to join its campaign, dubbed "Let's Put an End to Impunity in Crimes Against Journalists."

The initiative is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in the framework of a program that also includes investigative reporting, training for reporters working in hostile environments and the monitoring of the status of press freedom in the Americas.